- Payments made after beneficiaries died rose from R18.6-million to R211.6-million in 2025/26, the Auditor-General told Parliament on Tuesday, 6 October.
- Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Social Development wants Sassa and the department to fix the checks that allow improper payments.
The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) paid R211.6-million in grants after beneficiaries had died in the 2025/26 financial year, according to the Auditor-General of South Africa.
That is more than 11 times the R18.6-million recorded in the same category the year before. Sassa pays out R244.5-billion in grants a year to 17.8 million beneficiaries, so the amount is less than 0.1% of what it pays.
The Auditor-General’s office presented its findings to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Social Development on Tuesday, 6 October. MPs raised concerns that weaknesses in the system let grants reach beneficiaries who had died, and some people employed by government.
Auditors found failures in checks on beneficiaries aged 100 and older. Required life-certification checks and home visits had not been carried out, and a substantial proportion of those sampled had died.
The systems meant to catch these problems are not working together quickly enough. According to The Mercury’s report on the briefing, Auditor-General senior audit manager Puleng Molapo said information from the Department of Home Affairs was loaded manually each month, causing delays. Molapo called for better integration of government databases.
Sassa has explained the problem before. It told the committee in 2025 that payment files are prepared days ahead, so some beneficiaries die after a file has been processed. It said then that it was testing a “bulk recall” system with Bankserv and the South African Reserve Bank to claw back such payments.
Across the broader categories the auditors examined, Sassa paid about R1.33-billion to people who may not have been eligible in 2025/26. The biggest improvement was in payments made despite an incomplete database, which fell from R1.776-billion to R604.3-million. But that R604.3-million is money where auditors could not establish whether recipients qualified. It should not all be described as proven theft. Another R235.1-million was paid to members of the Government Employees Pension Fund.
The audit acknowledged some progress. Biometric checks were introduced for new beneficiaries and some existing recipients, but they have not reached the full beneficiary database.
Committee chairperson Bridget Masango said the audit outcome could not be treated as routine, given the department’s responsibility for administering social protection programmes and protecting public money.
“We are concerned that weaknesses in the system continue to expose public funds to wastage, particularly where payments are made to people who are no longer eligible to receive social grants,” she said.
The committee expressed concern over the Department of Social Development’s qualified audit opinion for 2025/26. It has demanded that the department and Sassa put effective corrective measures in place.
