More than a third of households in ANC strongholds depend on social grants to put bread on the table, reflecting the country’s tightrope walk between social welfare in the world’s most unequal society and economic prudence.
The general household survey by Stats SA, which places the Eastern Cape and Limpopo high in the rankings of child-headed households, shows that social grant beneficiaries climbed from 13% in 2002 to almost 40% in 2023.
The dependency, worsened by the pandemic-induced social relief of distress (SRD) grants, underscores the government’s commitment to shielding millions of South Africans from the tidal waves of poverty and inequality that threaten to engulf the nation.
Still, the surge in welfare grants, especially amid plans by the government to make the R370-per-month SRD grant permanent, raises questions about the sustainability of such fiscal policies. With SA broke, its credit ratings deep in junk territory and its tax base shrinking, some economists have said the expansion of social grants could lead to fiscal indiscipline.
Electoral platform
The ANC has built its electoral platform on the promise of social grants, suggesting it would push through a policy for basic income grants that would put finance minister Enoch Godongwana in an awkward position.
The Eastern Cape and Limpopo, historically ANC strongholds, will be key to its electoral fortunes when the country heads to the polls next week. Of the 10-million votes the ANC got in the 2019 elections, just more than 1-million were cast in Limpopo. With a 61% voter turnout in 2019, the ANC received 69% of the vote in the Eastern Cape.
Nationally, 54.8% of households reported salaries or wages or commissions as their main source of income, followed by grants (23%), remittances (8.8%) and other sources of income (10.4%). “Sources of main income vary considerably across provinces,” the survey reads.
The Western Cape (68.6%) and Gauteng (63.8%) were the only provinces in which more than three-fifths of households reported salaries as their main sources of income. More than a third of households in the Eastern Cape (37%) and 33.2% in Limpopo listed social grants as their main source of income. Remittances were the main source of income for 13.9% of households in Limpopo, and 11% of households in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
Salaries were the main source of income in the economic hubs of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and eThekwini — cities which will also go far in determining which party governs SA after the elections.
A survey by the Institute of Economic Research released last week shows that of the 19 parties it analysed, 10 have committed to expanding the social protection floor and five have committed to a basic income grant or a universal basic income. It ranks the ANC at the top of 19 political parties assessed on its policy stance.
The SRD grant, which reaches about 8.5-million beneficiaries, has been repeatedly extended thanks to a tax windfall from mining companies that allowed Godongwana to pay down debt and provide personal tax relief in 2022.
The grant, which has been extended until March 2025, was initially intended for unemployed adults and later extended to adults with little or no income. The Treasury has said that if the grant is extended beyond 2025, it estimated that at its current monetary value it would cost the state R46.6bn in 2025/26 and R52.7bn in 2026/27.
The survey shows most child-headed households were in the Eastern Cape at 32.9%, followed by KwaZulu-Natal (23.4%) and Limpopo (21.2%), while this was least common in the Western Cape (8.7%) and Gauteng (21.2%).
The percentage of orphaned children was highest in the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal, and lowest in the Western Cape.
More than 40% of SA households were headed by women in 2023, and nearly half of rural households.
Stats SA said significant progress in the provision of basic services to households had been made over the past two decades.
Statistician-general Risenga Maluleke, in releasing the results of the general household survey 2023 in Pretoria on Thursday, said more people had access to water and sanitation, housing, social grants, electricity and media than before.
These improvements have not made everyone happy though. In response to a question on whether households are happier, the same, or less happy than they were 10 years ago, 24.4% of households answered that they were happier, while 40.4% indicated that they were less happy.
With Tiisetso Motsoeneng
Update: May 23 2024
This article has been updated with new information.
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