Dear Editor
Following recent revelations of irregular and improper payments of social grants to undeserving beneficiaries, in violation of Section 21 of the Social Assistance Act, the DA is calling on President Cyril Ramaphosa to commission an independent audit of all social grant recipient databases as a matter of urgency.
The purpose of the independent audit will be to review the integrity of the data, weed out undeserving recipients and institute processes to recoup money that has been irregularly disbursed.
A response to a DA Parliamentary question by the Minister of Social Development, Lindiwe Zulu, revealed that the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) paid out R140 million to 75 000 deceased beneficiaries over the past three financial years.
In a separate case, a response to another DA parliamentary question by the Minister of Minister of Public Service and Administration, Sizwe Mchunu, revealed that 5,812 Covid-19 social relief of distress grants and 33,833 social grants – paid to undeserving public servants, were cancelled after it was discovered that the applicants or beneficiaries had contravened the Social Assistance Act by furnishing false information.
These two responses provide clear evidence that the integrity of the databases used to pay out social grants is severely compromised and could be costing the taxpayer tens of millions of rand in payments to undeserving individuals. To continue using these databases, despite these glaring shortcomings, would be grossly irresponsible and an unacceptable neglect of assigned responsibility on the part Ramaphosa as the head of the Executive.
Of serious concern, is that there appears to be no sustained effort to recoup money that has been irregularly paid out to undeserving recipients despite clear evidence of a violation of the law. Despite violations amounting to 40 000, the public service system has only instituted 42 disciplinary proceedings against implicated public servants for improper behaviour. This is just a drop in the ocean considering the scale of the fraud that took place.
In addition to recouping the monies fraudulently lost, the DA is of the view that criminal investigations must be instituted against all the implicated individuals. This is in line with Section 21(1)(a) of the Social Assistance Act which provides that “a person is guilty of an offence if such person, when applying for social assistance, furnishes information which he or she knows to be untrue or misleading in a material respect or makes a representation which to his or her knowledge is false, in order that he or she or another person may obtain or retain social assistance to which he or she is not entitled…”. Disciplinary action cannot be pursued in a case where the law has clearly been violated.
Revelations of substantial payments to deceased individuals and undeserving beneficiaries highlight a severe compromise in the integrity of the social grant recipient databases, putting an undue burden on the South African taxpayer. It is imperative to restore public confidence and uphold the rule of law in the administration of social grants.
Regards
Bridget Masango MP
DA Shadow Minister of Social Development
Stacker Of Wheat
A British man on safari walks into a bar far out in the reaches of a game reserve in Southern Africa, he stays at the bar for a while shooting the shit with the bartender and drinking like a fish, he offer to buy the barkeep a round and since no one else is within 2km of their small oasis of liquor the barkeep obliges. The englishman goes off to the bathroom to gain a qualified dilapidated fade at the porcelain, he\’s back and ready for a few more whiskeys. He\’s just sat down when suddenly in the distance he hears a scream. He looks over his shoulder and dismisses it as nothing, he turns to the barkeep and orders a drink, takes a sip and hears the scream again. He looks at the barkeep who just shrugs it off. A minute or two later he and the barman hear it again and fade outside to catch a scrutinize. They see a lone figure running towards them screaming, he spots them and lets out a sob, RACE!!!!! HE\”S COMING!!!!!
The barkeep and the Englishman both study at the terrified bedraggled sight before them, and try to unruffled him down, but he\’s completely inconsolable. They give him water and finally manage to procure a synonym-3 out of him but he struggles free from their grasp and dash away screaming.
A few minutes later the same thing happens with a whole group of men running in and screaming, he\’s coming, he\’s coming the barkeep grabs hold of one of the men as he tries to sprint past the bar and tries to acquire information out of him, again no response other than terrified gibberish.
The barkeep and his customer are starting to acquire worried, they start to pack up before another group of horrified natives race up to the bar most of them flee but one tries to camouflage behind the bar, the barkeep pulls out a shotgun and points it at the terrified man\’s face, finally managing to coax some words out of him. \”He\’s coming for us, Vernon Koekemoer is coming for us, we gain to veil!!! We believe to obtain out of here.\” He gets up and tries to rush but the barkeep grabs him, feeling trapped in a panic he grabs the barkeeps shotgun and blows his own head off. The Englishman and the barkeep inspect at each other starting to really panic now.
They survey out of the window and off in the distance they see a tornado coming towards the bar, at the bottom of the tornado they see the hugest beast of a man they gain ever seen, as he gets closer they spot that he is riding a rhinocerous and using a crocodile as a riding whip, with each smack of the crocodile across the back of the rhino the louder is screams and the faster it runs, the tornado following it getting ever larger.
The 2 study at each other and start to fortify their position, they\’ve got a gun and they\’re waaay to drunk to race, so they start piling bar stool and tables and anything they can obtain their hands on to produce sure they\’ll be safe when he arrives. They\’re not gonna fabricate it, they can see the man slowing down his rhino, by now the crocodile is nothing but reptile glue on the bruised rump of the half dead rhino, the rhino drops down dead from exhaustion and crashes to the ground accurate outside the bar the tornado loses it\’s last breath in a cloud of dust as the huge man crashes his way through the design shift barricade and charges up towards the bar where the 2 men believe taken shelter, he grabs a bottle of the hardest liquor on the shelf and down the entire litre in 1 gulp, he peers over the bar sobbing and sees the 2 defenders cowering down behind the crates of beer, they survey up at the mans\’ face and he stares at them with a scrutinize of complete and utter hopelessness, he stares at them for a half second and half screams, half sobs, \”Oh my god what are you still doing here!!! WE GAIN TO PROCURE OUT OF HERE NOW!!!! Vernon Koekemoer is coming!!!!\”
Turnip King
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an dilapidated man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d dash the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to acquire abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would guide to a painful death. Puny by diminutive, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still believe yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t every sinful. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful situation to fade on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could procure one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually maintain a few more years to appreciate life to the fullest and see the world in every its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a plot with a modern mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn every the ways to prepare the milk, and just indulge in the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in Novel Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Execute you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to obtain a single glass? I enact. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very terminate of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had approach to an stay, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.