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CORRECTION: SA pays out 17.2 million social welfare grants to 10.6 million beneficiaries

This article is more than 7 years old

Daily news reports document the uncertainty over whether South Africa's social welfare grants will be paid come April. The reason is that the South African Social Security Agency's contract with its grant distributor ends on 31 March.

In previous fact-checks on the topic of social grants, we have reported the number of beneficiaries incorrectly. At last count, 17,191,121 different grants were paid to 10,597,626 people.



"The total number of beneficiaries refers to the number of adults who collect social grants at the pay point," Stanley Malange, the South African Social Security Agency's manager of strategic monitoring, explained to Africa Check. "The total number of social grants refers to the number of grants awarded to a beneficiary."

As an example, one adult beneficiary may receive 3 child support grants, a type of grant of which 12,092,183 were paid out in February 2017. Furthermore, some recipients of the grant for older persons, disability grant or war veteran’s grant may receive an additional grant-in-aid if they require full-time care because of physical or mental disability. The grant-in-aid of R350 per month was paid out to 161,989 recipients in February 2017.



We have corrected our reports and apologise for the error. - Anim van Wyk (08/03/2017)

 

Additional reading

https://africacheck.org/factsheets/separating-myth-from-reality-a-guide-to-social-grants-in-south-africa/

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