The future of the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant beyond the March 2027 extension remains uncertain.
- It is not clear whether the R370-a-month Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant will continue beyond March 2027.
- Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said government departments are discussing linking the support for working-age adults to skills development and employment programmes.
- But civil society groups and researchers warn that tying grants to job-seeking or skills conditions risks excluding many beneficiaries, and deepening poverty.
The future of the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant beyond the March 2027 extension remains uncertain. The National Treasury has confirmed that there are “no fixed timelines” for finalising proposals on what will replace the R370-a-month grant.
In the medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS) tabled in November, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said the SRD grant would be extended “while proposals are finalised to link the working-age population to skills development and employment programmes”.
The SRD grant has been a lifeline to the 8-million currently receiving it.
“The intention is to complete policy refinement before the 2026 Medium Term Policy Statement to ensure alignment with fiscal planning and implementation priorities,” Treasury said.
The Department of Social Development (DSD) is leading the process while working with key organs of state like the Department of Employment and Labour and the National Treasury. Treasury did not specify whether the grant could become conditional or evolve into a universal basic income. Treasury said once policy proposals are approved by Cabinet, “the policy will be shared with the public”.
Social Development acting head of communication, Sandy Godlwana, said the SRD grant was always temporary and “has to be replaced by a permanent provision in the form of Basic Income Support (BIS)”.
She said the BIS draft policy was presented to Cabinet’s Social Protection, Community and Human Development Cluster Committee in November 2024. “Key to the proposal is linking beneficiaries to sustainable livelihoods and economic opportunities,” Godlwana said. She added that the committee had asked the department to strengthen specific aspects such as affordability, eligibility, and employment linkages. “While no final timeline has been set, the intention is to re-table a draft policy in 2026/27 financial year.”
Researchers and civil society groups argue that linking social assistance to skills development or work-seeking requirements “misunderstands the nature of the crisis”.
In an analysis published by Econ3x3, researchers argue that the way unemployment is framed has shaped ineffective policy responses. When unemployment is treated as a crisis of jobseekers, attention is directed toward people’s “qualifications and skills, their job-seeking strategies, their attitudes”, turning “the jobseeker” into “the problem to be solved”.
This framing, the researchers argue, has produced “another skills certificate, another work-readiness intervention, another CV workshop”, while avoiding “a well-understood, yet inconvenient, structural reality: there are not enough jobs”.
Citing the Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the second quarter, they said that the formal sector employed close to 10.8-million people in 2015 and 11.5-million in 2024, while four million people entered the labour force over the same period. “Put differently…for every one formal job created since 2015, nearly seven people joined the labour force”.
At the current pace of job creation, the researchers argue, “it would be more than 200 years before we would have enough jobs just for the 12.6 million people unemployed today”.
They propose reframing unemployment as a “crisis of missing jobs”.
Similar concerns have been raised by the Universal Basic Income Coalition (UBIC). They believe the lack of clear information is fuelling anxiety among the millions of people who rely on the SRD grant.
In a joint statement, the coalition warned that proposals to link the SRD grant to employment-related conditions risk excluding large numbers of eligible beneficiaries.
In response, Treasury said it “acknowledges the concerns raised” and emphasised that any policy linking social assistance to skills development or job-seeking conditions would be designed “to promote inclusion rather than deepen exclusion”.
The Department of Employment and Labour did not respond to our request for comment by the time of publication.
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