I fumed as I watched on television as about 3-million pensioners queued for their pensions. Videos circulate of rural towns such as Lusikisiki in Transkei, and township malls packed with pensioners, check by jowl for hours at a time. News channels report pensioners sleeping overnight in such queues.
My brother in Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal, filmed 3km queues at Tugela Ferry and Greytown. The police stopped him for not wearing a mask in his car! This is a ticking time bomb. Month-end June, July and August are coming. Mid-winter, flu season.
Social grant queues are the biggest threat to our nation’s health; we will return to level 5 lockdown due to this, not to small businesses going back to work. These payment queues are the coronavirus killing fields, and we need urgent intervention.
These are our grandmothers and grandfathers. The elderly and infirm deserve care and respect as our elders. They deserve that in the best of times; they deserve it even more in the worst of times.
More than 3-million old people queued until May 5, then others queued, mainly for child grants from May 6. According to the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa), a total of 11.3-million people will receive social grants in queues such as these.
Over the same week, police minister Bheki Cele threatened and wagged his finger, PW Botha style. “We will lock you all up and revert to level 5”, he threatened when he saw a few hundred joggers and walkers enjoying their three hours of freedom. Okay Mr — or is it General? — Cele, what do you say about the 11-million people queuing up for up to eight hours?
The ineptitude is staggering, and the double standards border on the comical. But the government doesn’t have choices, because it has perpetuated this payment system. Centralising Sassa payments at formal retailers and banks not only costs grant recipients transport money but also excludes small and informal businesses, entrenching a non-inclusive economy.
An important aside is that grant recipients draw almost all their money in cash when it hits their bank account. In my book Kasinomic Revolution I wrote about the many reasons for, and solutions to, this habit, but for now that’s what happens and so we need to address these cash withdrawal queues.
I believe an urgent task-team should be formed by government and business, especially banks, financial institutions, the department of co-operative government and traditional affairs, the Treasury, the department of social development and Sassa, to develop urgent and immediate solutions.
Banks have mobile ATMs that are used at concerts and other events. Put these in residential areas, particularly infection hot-spots, and place them under military and police guard.
I have seen impressive measures by certain malls, with chairs placed metres apart stretching out into the parking areas, water served to pensioners, and pensioners-only days. This should be compulsory at all payment points
The organised micro-finance industry under the Microfinance Association has thousands of outlets generally placed within the spaces where the poorest people live. Can they not distribute grants under strict regulations, the same way they distribute micro-loans? This industry is currently under lockdown, a boon to the mashonisas, the illegal lenders.
Thousands of devices in spaza shops and small businesses enable card payments, from card payment businesses such as Yoco and iKhokha to devices in spazas dispensing airtime and electricity, such as Selpal, Blue Label Telecoms, Zarga and Flash. Can these not be reverse engineered from accepting payment to making payments, such as cash withdrawals from the till?
On a physical level, we need to enforce physical distancing and masks in malls and small rural towns. To their credit, I have seen impressive measures by certain malls, with chairs placed metres apart stretching out into the parking areas, water served to pensioners, and pensioners-only days. This should be compulsory at all payment points.
Taxi measures must be enforced, with sanitiser and masks along with the rule on taxi capacities. I have been involved in a proposal by the organised taxi industry to business, to assist in the distribution of masks (and sanitiser) if these can be supplied free. This is a small cost for a critical measure.
The same applies to queues for food parcels. The bottom line is that we cannot feed this epidemic away; people must get back to work, particularly informal-sector and small businesses. According to the 2108 SA Household Survey, 2.1-million poor households live in informal dwellings (the poorest people), compared to the 13.5-million in formal and about 1.8-million in traditional dwellings.
How do you get food parcels to 2.1-million households? And add to that maybe, 1-million to 2-million foreigners! Food parcels, no matter how well meaning and gratefully accepted, will never stem the tide of need — and they need queues to be dished out. If we are to dish out food, let’s do it in vouchers or cash so recipients will buy from their local shops, be it a corner Spar, vegetable hawker, chicken farmer or spaza. Let’s use the same interventions we use for social grant queues.
How can any small business, informal trader or outdoor activity be worse than queues for social grants or food parcels? Let’s focus on the things that really are a risk and restrict these. For a start, let’s spend our time addressing queues of the most vulnerable in terms of risk and poverty.
• Alcock is an author and marketing consultant specialising in the informal and township economies.
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