The Department of Social Development (gov.za) underspent its 2025/26 social grants budget by R4.8 billion, the writer says.
While a pensioner in rural KwaZulu-Natal walks kilometres to catch a taxi she cannot afford, to queue for hours at an office that may still turn her away, the department meant to protect her has just confirmed it left R4.8 billion of its budget unspent last year. That fact alone should be the scandal. Instead, it barely made a ripple.
The Department of Social Development underspent its 2025/26 grants budget by R4.8 billion – R793 million on the Old Age Grant alone, R533 million on Child Support, R318 million on Disability. Spread across beneficiaries, that works out to roughly R1 200 extra per person for the year – money Treasury allocated to lift the poorest South Africans, and which never reached them. “Stricter verification and reduced uptake” is not a defence – it’s an admission that the system has become better at keeping money out of poor hands than getting it into them.
This is not new. In 2020/21, the department disclosed R1.32 billion in irregular expenditure. Gauteng’s provincial arm alone racked up over R1.3 billion by early 2025, including R142 million for “dignity packs” procured in one year and paid for only in the next. The Auditor-General has repeatedly found that no one is disciplined for these occurrences. The cycle repeats, almost word for word, every year.
