Berenice Paulsen has been helping her sister, 63-year-old Desiree Fredericks, apply for an Older Persons Grant since June. They were among several pensioners who have been forced to return to the SASSA Bellville branch for months trying to complete their grant applications.
- Pensioners at SASSA’s Bellville office in Cape Town say they’ve been sent back and forth for months.
- Applicants queue from the early hours and make multiple trips to finalise their Older Persons Grant applications.
- SASSA says its Bellville branch has high demand and limited staff, and it will hold an outreach session at the Parow Community Centre on Friday.
“This is our fifth month trying to get the grant,” says Berenice Paulsen while waiting in a long queue outside the SASSA office in Bellville. She has been trying to help her sister, 63-year-old Desiree Fredericks, apply for an Older Persons Grant (OPG) since June.
“They don’t tell you exactly what you need to bring the first or second time. Every time it’s a different story,” Paulsen said. The sisters say they left home in Parow at 2:15am to join the queue.
They were among dozens of pensioners and applicants who said they’ve been sent back and forth to the SASSA office for months. Each time, after having spent hours queuing, they are unable to finalise their Older Persons Grant applications due to missing documents. They say they’ve had to return several times with new documents.
To ease pressure at busy branches and assist beneficiaries directly, SASSA officials will be at the Parow Community Centre on Friday, 14 November.
When GroundUp arrived at the branch before 7am, several beneficiaries had already been served inside. About 150 people remained outside in three queues: one for new applicants, one for appointments, and another for walk-ins.
Fredericks worked in upholstery for more than 40 years, but stopped two years due to an age-related condition.
At their first visit, the sisters were told to bring a certified copy of Fredericks’ ID and a bank statement. But they were told Fredericks was listed as employed and could not apply for a state pension. At the next visit, the sisters were asked to provide an affidavit and a letter from Fredericks’s former employer. They also collected a letter from the Department of Labour confirming that Fredericks was no longer employed. The fourth time they returned, SASSA officials sent them away to bring a copy of her late husband’s death certificate.
“I don’t work. We need to borrow money every time we come here; it’s very difficult,” said Paulsen.
Ralph (who asked his surname be witheld), from Bellville, said he has been trying to apply for the grant since July.
“They told me I had to bring a UIF form. When I returned the second time with the form, they said I needed to bring my wife’s UIF papers. The third time, the staff said I need to bring a different UIF form.”
Ralph said he left his home in Delft at 4:45am, paying R18 for a single taxi trip to Bellville. “The queue went all the way down the road and around the corner. You must come early. If you come later, you’ll be waiting until closing time tonight.”
He said his previous employer let him go in May. He now does occasional piecemeal jobs, earning about R300 a day.
Also in the queue were Wanda and Abraham Hofmeister from Uitsig. They said Abraham’s grant has been paid late since July. They later discovered that his grant is under review.
“A staff member told us we had to bring our bank statements, certified copies of our IDs and his pension letter from the government. So we got all of those documents. But when we came back, they told us that because we sold our house, they needed the transfer documents,” said Wanda.
SASSA Western Cape spokesperson Shivani Wahab said the Bellville office “issues beneficiary education to each client on arrival, which contains detailed information on the qualifying criteria and requirements for all social grants”.
On Monday, 10 November, the branch assisted 300 people.
Wahab said the office has a “high influx and is operational until 6pm but with minimal staff”.
She added that SASSA is conducting social grant reviews, which has increased the influx to metro offices, and that “an online application system is available as an alternative platform for all social grant applications.”
The documents required to apply for different grants can be found on SASSA’s website.
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Human rights violations: Violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Dorothy Solitaire
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 have a good old go 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 go outside to take a look. They see a lone figure running towards them screaming, he spots them and lets out a cry, RUN!!!!! HE\”S COMING!!!!!
The barkeep and the Englishman both look at the terrified bedraggled sight before them, and try to calm him down, but he\’s completely inconsolable. They give him water and finally manage to get a word out of him but he struggles free from their grasp and run 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 get information out of him, again no response other than terrified gibberish.
The barkeep and his customer are starting to get worried, they start to pack up before another group of horrified natives run up to the bar most of them flee but one tries to hide 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 have to hide!!! We have to get out of here.\” He gets up and tries to run 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 look at each other starting to really panic now.
They look 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 have 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 look at each other and start to fortify their position, they\’ve got a gun and they\’re waaay to drunk to run, so they start piling bar stool and tables and anything they can get their hands on to make sure they\’ll be safe when he arrives. They\’re not gonna make it, they can see the man slowing down his rhino, by now the crocodile is nothing but reptile paste on the bruised rump of the half dead rhino, the rhino drops down dead from exhaustion and crashes to the ground right outside the bar the tornado loses it\’s last breath in a cloud of dust as the huge man crashes his way through the make shift barricade and charges up towards the bar where the 2 men have 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 look up at the mans\’ face and he stares at them with a look 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 HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW!!!! Vernon Koekemoer is coming!!!!\”
New York Mood
The quickest means of communication is to trust a girl with a rumor and then make her vow not to tell