Picture: Social grant beneficiaries queuing
The looming disaster in the delivery of social grants has kept the nation agog for two weeks now, and is likely to keep us riveted for at least a month to come – riveted in the way some are mesmerised by the Donald Trump presidency, as though watching a slow-motion car wreck. We detail in this edition of the Mail & Guardian the lies, prevarications and sheer bafflement of the state officials responsible for this mess.
The minister who should be taking responsibility, Bathabile Dlamini, has been absent from the parliamentary inquiry into the potential catastrophe facing the 17-million recipients of welfare grants; she was not even able to get there to account for her bizarre behaviour and her lack of action since she became aware of what could go wrong and how bad it could be for the country, not to mention the ruling party.
So it seems as though there’s no good news in this. We haven’t really even been given a shred of hope that the department and the relevant agency can sort it out in time. But there is a sliver of positive news: Parliament stepped in and tried to get to the bottom of it. The public was able to see Dlamini’s unfortunate minions squirming as they tried to explain.
It was not a pleasant sight, and it can’t be said that Parliament has solved the problem or even managed to call the minister truly to account, but it’s a reminder that these democratic mechanisms are there, to be used by South Africans to drag some kind of accountability out of the executive. If we could use such mechanisms more, especially in Parliament, we might become the democracy we would like to be.