Mixed Reviews for Cape Town SASSA Offices on Grant Payment Day

• GroundUp visited two South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) offices in Cape Town on Wednesday.
• Last Friday, Postbank announced that beneficiaries using the SASSA Gold Card have until 31 May to swap to the Black Card. The previous deadline was 20 March.
• At the Eerste River office, we found that beneficiaries had left mid-morning after being told that the system had gone offline. Although the system was restored within an hour, most people had already left.
• At the branch in Khayelitsha, service appeared to be running smoothly and some beneficiaries who had switched to the new card said they were paid on Wednesday.

GroundUp visited two South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) offices in Cape Town on Wednesday amid concerns that Old Age payment grants would be affected by the Postbank card switch.

Over the past few months, millions of beneficiaries were asked to urgently migrate to the new Postbank Black Card. Last Friday, Postbank announced that beneficiaries using the SASSA Gold Card have until 31 May to swap to the Black Card. The previous deadline was 20 March.

Old age grants were paid on Wednesday. In Khayelitsha, we found that the usually busy office was calm and things were moving along swiftly. Some beneficiaries who had switched to the new card said they were paid on Wednesday. But at the Eerste River branch, our reporter arrived to find a queue of irate beneficiaries who were turned away mid-morning after a staff member announced that the system was offline.

Nathan Taylor of #PayTheGrants said the organisation had received both positive and negative reports about the Postbank Black Card.

He warned that payment delays were deepening poverty and debt, forcing beneficiaries to spend more on transport and take out loans. “We have repeatedly called for capacitation of SASSA offices, accessible pay points, trained customer care, and strengthened IT systems; we see no plan that takes this seriously.”

Khayelitsha

The Khayelitsha office is usually packed with long lines. People often overnight at the site to be first in the queue the next morning.

According to SASSA, it’s one of 16 offices in the Western Cape and is “particularly busy, serving approximately 520 people a day”.

On Wednesday, Nomabhaso Thini, 76, came to collect her social grant. Using a walker, she was accompanied by her grandchild.

“I live here in Kuyasa. Sometimes when we come here, there are long queues, but I guess I have been lucky because I have never had to wait too long to get inside,” said Thini.

We spoke to several pensioners who said they had switched to the new card and were paid on Wednesday.

GroundUp reported last month that SASSA was struggling to secure a permanent office in Khayelitsha. “Since 2022, the national Public Works department has advertised for a permanent office space in Khayelitsha five times, but to no avail,” said SASSA Western Cape spokesperson Shivani Wahab.

SASSA had planned to open two permanent offices in Khayelitsha, she said, adding that a space at Ilitha Park Mall was considered but ultimately rejected because the “costs were exorbitant” for SASSA.

Service appeared to be running smoothly at SASSA’s office in Kuyasa, Khayelitsha on Wedensday.

Eerste River

In Eerste River, we spoke to pensioners Richard Muller, 62, and his wife Marlene, 64, from Kuils River. They said they applied to switch to the Postbank Black Card at their local Shoprite on 17 March.

They didn’t foresee any issues when they went to withdraw their grants this month. But when they arrived, they discovered no money had been loaded onto Marlene’s new card. They were among several beneficiaries who were visiting the SASSA branch about grant payment issues with their new Black Card.

“I gave them my [Black] Card and entered my pin, and then they told me there’s no money. We tried three times,” said Marlene. She handed over her Gold Card in case the funds were there, but was told that the card was also empty.

The couple was told by staff to wait and see if the problem is resolved next month. “This is another R100 for my travelling fare which I didn’t budget for from Eerste River to Kuils River,” said Richard. “If the money isn’t paid in, we must just manage.”

At 10:17am, a SASSA official came outside to inform the beneficiaries in the line that the system was offline. “People who are here for enquiries, especially if it’s going to require system checks, we won’t be able to do anything because the system is offline. We can only take in bank forms because that doesn’t require the system to be online,” the official said.

Many people left the queue at this point, but less than an hour later, we saw people being assisted again as the system was online.

Elsa Fago, 68, arrived at 6am from Blue Downs to collect a SASSA confirmation letter needed for a hospital visit. Her Uber fare was R140 for a round trip. “I was here last week, and they said the system was offline. Now this guy tells me the system is offline again … This is not right. They must help us, we are old people.”

We have sent questions to SASSA in the Western Cape. Their response will be included once received.

Pensioners Richard, 62, and his wife Marlene Muller, 64, from Kuils River were among dozens of beneficiaries who reported having issues accessing their grants on Wednesday at the Eerste River SASSA office. Photo: Marecia Damons

© 2025 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.

We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.