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Mukoni T Ratshitanga
More than 200 Northern Province pensioners have taken court action against the provincial government’s decision to freeze pension and disability grants to 92 000 people.
Court papers served this week on the province’s MEC for Health and Welfare, Hunadi Mateme, say the freeze should be invalidated on the grounds that it is illegal. They argue that the recipients must be paid their money owing from February with 15% interest.
The province froze the grants in February because it believed at least two-thirds of the payments were going to “ghost pensioners” who were looting R44,5-million a month. The provincial Department of Health and Welfare said it was a temporary measure, and some legitimate claimants found their pensions restored.
Department representative Tshepo Moshima said in February: “The affected people are those whose details are not complete in the files – because of old identity documents, and ages younger than the qualifying ages of 65 for men and 60 for women. The department anticipates completing the process by the end of March.”
But thousands of recipients have not received their grants since February. A 52-year-old mental patient committed suicide after he heard he would not receive his payment.
The 200 court applicants are qualified to receive grants – they are all over the age of 60 and severely disabled.
One of them, Mujaji Gladys Maluleke, says in an affidavit that she wants her own grant reinstated from February and that of all other beneficiaries affected by the freeze.
“The affected beneficiaries are a large group of poor, unsophisticated and often illiterate people who cannot effectively protect their own interests,” she argues in the affidavit.
“Insofar as they are a very large group of people who have been and continue to be deprived of the social assistance to which they are entitled by the unlawful conduct of the state, it is also in the public interest that this application should be brought on their behalf.”
Maluleke’s South African identity document, issued in September 1987, records her age as 61 and appears to prove that the department imposed a blanket freeze and not merely on “doubtful cases”.
She says her grant was suspended without notice. Unemployed, she and her six grandchildren depend on the grant for their monthly expenses. She has been trying to make ends meet by selling home-made beer and earns about R30 a week. Her grant was R470 a month. She has accumulated a debt of R720 from a local shop owner which she cannot pay.
“My grandchildren and I now live on mealie meal except that I manage now and then to buy chicken feet which I cook with the mealie meal.
“Mhloti’s [one of her grandchildren] school fees are R70 per year and, because I was unable to pay it, she has had to drop out of school. I have also not been able to pay Tshipo’s [another grandchild] school fees, but her school has allowed her to stay on.”
Northern Province Premier Ngoako Ramathlodi last week asked the national government to take over the administration of pension payouts, days before the department announced it had completed its audit into the payments.
Department director Nicholas Crisp said 36 700 illegal recipients were found who were costing the department R251-million a year. Crisp could not comment on the court action, saying he had not yet seen the papers.
Maluleke’s legal representative, Nick de Villiers of the Legal Resources Centre in Pretoria, said: “It’s such a blatant abuse of power by the state. We just couldn’t ignore it.”