Today’s judgment by the Constitutional Court regarding the payment of social grants by the South African Social Services Agency and Cash Paymaster Services was a resounding win for South Africans and a celebration of the independence of the judiciary in the country.
The Constitutional Court today extended the contract of Cash Paymaster Services with the South African Social Security Agency for 12 months, on the same terms as at present, and under strict supervision.
Corruption Watch appeared in the Constitutional Court yesterday to make written submissions in the matter between the Black Sash and the minister of social development, et al, with Freedom Under Law and the South African Post Office also making submissions.
Cash Paymaster Services has written to us through their attorneys, asking us to retract certain recent statements our executive director David Lewis has made in the media. They are concerned about the statements’ possible implication of corruption on their part, connected to the social grants debacle. We, in turn, believe the statements have merit and will not retract them.
The Financial Intelligence Centre amendment bill is one step closer to being signed into law. Having being tabled in Parliament as long ago as April 2015 by former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene, the bill was passed last week by a unified House. It now falls to President Jacob Zuma to enact the legislation.
What SA’s experience in the past 20 years teaches us is that to build an effective, corruption-free democracy we need something more than periodic elections, writes our executive director David Lewis. We need active, vigilant, demanding citizens persistently holding their leaders to account.
As the South African Social Security Agency prepares to negotiate a new social grants payment contract with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), Erin Torkelson unpacks the way CPS parent company Net1 is using the payment system to benefit its subsidiary companies by exploiting vulnerable rantees. A new contract with CPS, therefore, would amount to grievous betrayal of Sassa beneficiaries.
Corruption Watch, following the failure of the South Africa Social Security Agency (Sassa) to find an alternative service provider to deliver social grants, calls for the Minister of Social Development, Bathabile Dlamini to be sacked for her handling of the matter.
Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts took the South African Social Services Agency (Sassa) to task over its relationship with social grants service provider Cash Paymaster Services, saying the relationship must be investigated. members of the committee also demanded that the agency show Parliament the respect it deserves. (Scopa), Sassa leadership had appeared before the committee to explain the agency’s R1-billion wasteful and irregular expenditure recorded, as well their project plan for the grants rollout post CPS contract.