State appeals finding that R370 SRD grant is a permanent facility

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The social relief of distress (SRD) grant was created as a temporary measure, and a high court finding that it is a permanent facility encroaches on the executive’s powers, the state argues in appeal papers filed at the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).The social development minister and the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa), represented by Adv Thembi Ntoane, are appealing against the entire judgement of the Pretoria high court, which found that the grant is a permanent feature promulgated under the Social Assistance Act.The SCA will hear the matter on Tuesday. The state lost the case in the high court in the litigation initiated by the advocacy organisation Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ) and #PayTheGrants campaign.The government introduced the SRD grant during Covid-19 to provide relief to people who lost employment during the pandemic and retained it in May 2020 as social assistance for working-age adults with little to no income.The high court found that despite the government’s concession that the number of people eligible to receive the R370 grant may be as high as 18.3-million, the Treasury only provided a budget for 10.5-million people. It said the state had used administrative and procedural obstacles which excluded vulnerable people in need of social assistance, who would ordinarily be eligible, from receiving the grant. It declared several grant regulations unconstitutional, and found them to be bottlenecks for eligible people to access the grant. This includes the regulation that restricts applications to be made online only. The court order required the government to devise and implement a plan to progressively increase the value of the SRD grant and declared unconstitutional the income threshold for people eligible for the grant of R624 per person per month, which is below the poverty line. In the court papers, Ntoane argues that the court’s finding that SRD is of equal status to the other social grants provided for in the Social Assistance Act “resulted in the erroneous declarations that the Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress Regulations, April 22 2022 (Covid-19 SRD Regulations 4), are unconstitutional and invalid”.“It is submitted that in upholding the finding of the court a quo that the Covid-19 SRD is permanent would have the effect of completely changing Parliament’s purpose for the Covid-19 SRD and turning it to a permanent income grant for the unemployed,” she says.“In addition, this finding would have the effect of encroaching into the space of the executive.”Ntoane argues the high court erred in finding people eligible for the SRD grant who live in rural areas have no access to smartphones and that the department’s decision to only allow online applications excluded them.“The court ... accepted such submissions without any supporting evidence placed before the court,” she said.Ntoane’s submission relies on the fact that more than 15-million people applied for the grant, and she argues this shows the government was in line with the constitutional provision to ensure people have access to social assistance. “It is undisputed that through the digital platform application, over 15-million people have accessed the Covid-19 SRD, and over 8.7-million people who meet the qualifying criteria for the Covid-19 SRD have been paid,” she said.According to Sassa’s 2024/25 annual report, the government spent more than R266bn on social assistance to citizens unable to support themselves and their dependants.The IEJ argues that the “online only” application requirement restricts many people eligible for the grant from accessing the social assistance.In his own papers, finance minister Enoch Godongwana — who is appealing against some parts of the judgement — argues that if the grant were extended to cover 18-million people instead of 10.5-million, this would put pressure on the state’s finances. The Treasury maintains that even taking the most conservative numbers into account and using 2023/24 figures, the impact of the high court’s order would be to add R93.5bn to a total allocation for grants of R253.8bn.Initially pegged at R350, the SRD grant was raised to R370 in 2024. The IEJ says the R20 increase does not come close to keeping up with inflation, meaning that the real value of the grant has declined substantially from what it was in May 2020. In a rebuttal, Adv Gilbert Marcus, representing the finance minister, argues: “We are aware of no authority, and the IEJ parties cited none in the high court, for the proposition that a failure to increase grants by a certain amount — whether inflation-based or otherwise — is unconstitutional.” The Treasury pinned its failure to increase the income threshold of R624 on a lack of funding. “The premise of not increasing the threshold is to avoid collapsing the whole system,” Marcus argues. “It follows, in our submission, that the high court was wrong to conclude that it was unconstitutional of the state to set the income threshold at R624 and to set the value of the SRD grant at R370 a month.” Should the SCA rule against the appeal, Godongwana asks the court to invalidate the regulations it considers to be unlawful and suspend the declaration of invalidity for no fewer than 12 months but preferably 24 months.