Editorial: Sassa dilemma not easily solved

Time is running out for the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa). In less than two months, millions of grant dependents stand to miss out unless the agency appoints a new paymaster – or gets Constitutional Court approval to continue with its current service provider.

There are few options available to Sassa. On its own it cannot carry out the task come April 1, when the contract with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) concludes.

Nor can it easily roll over this contract, which was declared invalid by the Constitutional Court in 2014.

The court, recognising the enormity of establishing a new payment operator, allowed Sassa until the end of March to get its house in order, while instructing it to issue a new tender. Except that Sassa didn’t. Despite repeated warnings to get a move on, it dithered.

So now the agency wants to approach the same court for guidance. Yet even this overture, pencilled in for this week, has suffered a delay until next week.

Quite what the agency is seeking is not known. It cannot logically ask for an extension to an invalid contract.

Neither does it have the time to open a fresh tender.

So talk about being between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Of course, this is all the agency’s own doing, aided and abetted by the indifference of Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini, she of “smallanyana skeletons” fame.

It comes as no surprise that it is Dlamini’s department linked to an odious contract, although it must be said that CPS parent Net1’s role in this saga honks.

Yet, it is now CPS holding all the cards, waiting in the wings, as it were, for the inevitable cry for help that it will undoubtedly answer – for a price.

You can bet the government will cough up because the alternative – quelling millions of restive vassals – will cost it dearly in political mileage.