EDITORIAL | The law of the land applies to everyone, including ministers It will set a poor precedent if Bathabile Dlamini is allowed to ignore a ConCourt ruling 24 February 2021 - 20:20
Former social development minister Bathabile Dlamini’s feeble excuse for not paying her legal bill, as ordered by the Constitutional Court more than two years ago, reveals her flagrant disrespect for our country’s laws.
In 2018 she was ordered by the court to personally contribute 20% of the costs of a legal challenge against her department by Freedom under Law and the Back Sash. The NGOs went to court to resolve a social grant payment crisis that was largely caused by her staggering incompetence. It related to an unlawful and irregular contract awarded to Cash Paymaster Services to distribute 17 million social grants to 10 million people. It brought millions of SA’s most vulnerable to the verge of destitution, and was a textbook case study on how to run a state grant system into
The digitisation of South Africa’s social grant payment system was sold as promising to expand financial inclusion, but monopolisation by a single private company mutated it into a system of exploitation, according to the national director of the Black Sash, Lynette Maart. And the company, Net1, might not be done in the “social grant space” just yet, warned the Black Sash’s national advocacy manager, Hoodah Abrahams-Fayker.
Maart and Abrahams-Fayker were speaking during a webinar titled “Locked in! How South Africa came to rely on a digital social security payment monopolist”.
The webinar is part of a series, “Transformer States: A Conversation Series on Digital Government and Human Rights” organised by the Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project. It is based at the New York University School of Law. Members of the project interview key people about a specific case study of digital government.
Politics not behind instruction
While the department has confirmed Dlamini’s pension is being withheld, it rubbished claims that it was due to political reasons. In fact, Dlamini is aware of the reasons, it added.
“We want to categorically state that such reports are unfortunate, without substance and are devoid of any truth. The information before the solicitor-general reveals that the instruction to withhold the payment of the former minister’s pension was received from the South African Social Security Agency [Sassa].
“Reasons for the withdrawal of the pension are well known by the former minister and Sassa and thus far no party has contested them nor has there been any intention to do so. The state attorney acts upon the instruction of its client, which are the departments and state entities that it represents,” it said on Wednesday.
While these days both Ace Magashule and Jacob Zuma, and their supporters, give every impression of defiance against the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC), the sacking of the Eastern Cape Health MEC Sindiswa Gomba suggests the picture is becoming more complicated.