Over the past three financial years, the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) paid R140 million to deceased beneficiaries – which cannot be recovered.
This was revealed by Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu in a written reply to a parliamentary Q&A – noting that this sum was paid to approximately 75,000 people who had passed away.
According to Zulu’s reply, SASSA paid R59 million in the 2020/21 financial year, R50 million in the 2022/23 financial year, and another R31 million in 2023/24.
While some media reports suggested that corruption was one of the reasons for these irregular payments, a Sassa spokesperson refuted this, saying that the payments were instead a result of onerous administrative issues at the Department of Home Affairs around verifying the death of recipients.
The agency added that the payments were made as a result of:
- A death being reported late to the Department of Home Affairs – days after the actual date of death – whose date may have been after Sassa’s payment to the bank account; or
- A death being reported late to Sassa by family members days after payment was long extracted.
Elaborating on the issue with Newzroom Afrika, Sassa spokesperson Paseka Letsatsi noted that in most cases, the money was paid into the recipient’s accounts and withdrawn by family members, meaning that it is not entirely wasted.
He added that Sassa cannot request the money back once it has been incorrectly paid to a dead beneficiary. All it can do is stop the payments once Home Affairs verifies the death.
“Unfortunately, neither Sassa nor the Department of Home Affairs has any control over this element of late reporting of death,” the agency said.
However, Sassa is working closely with Home Affairs to improve the system. Sassa also reviews beneficiary personal details now and then to ascertain if the beneficiary circumstances are still the same.
Currently, the review process is conducted through a physical contact arrangement (face-to-face) between Sassa staff and the affected beneficiaries, and not virtually. If a client is not alive, such a client will not be able to present themselves for a review process.
Despite this issue, work with Home Affairs has improved the system over recent years, Sassa said. This improvement has been shown in the decreasing number of dead beneficiaries being paid.
For example, in the 2023/24 financial year, Sassa paid 15,204 deceased beneficiaries compared to 32,920 in the 2021/22 financial year.
Sassa noted that it would continue working with the Department of Home Affairs to ensure the systems are connected.
