This investigative report is the culmination of a year-long investigation by Open Secrets into the pension fund industry in South Africa. According to the Financial Services Board’s 2018 Annual Report, over R42 billion in benefits is owed to over 4 million pensioners and pension fund members. The Bottom Line has a companion booklet which centres the stories of the most vulnerable members of our society, those who have been systematically and structurally precluded from enjoying civil and human rights throughout South Africa’s history.

In this ‘data play’ nothing is mahala! The new frontier of the ‘digital welfare state’ poses new opportunities for corporations to profit from the data gathered from South Africa’s social grant system. This is a threat to social justice and the constitutional rights of people who receive social grants. The investigative report, Digital Profiteers: Who Profits Next from Social Grants, focuses on how the digitalisation of state services offers opportunities for corporations to generate excessive profits from digital systems that can harm vulnerable people.

A three-part series published in GroundUp which looks at the failures of the South African grants system to guard against welfare profiteering and what that means for the potential implementation of a basic income grant.

On the 15th of April 2021, Liberty’s application to have 23 pension funds that were unlawfully cancelled reinstated was heard in the Gauteng High Court. Open Secrets and the Unpaid Benefits Campaign (UBC), represented by the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS), made an application to join the application as amicus curiae in the public interest. We argued that we should be admitted as amicus because some of the material facts that gave rise to Liberty’s application were missing and which were the subject of our investigation The Bottom Line. Moreover, the right to social security of many pensioners and pension beneficiaries was implicated in this and other future reinstatement applications.

Open Secrets and the Unpaid Benefits Campaign (UBC), represented by the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) applied to the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) on an urgent basis to ensure a transparent process to select the new Commissioner and Deputy Commissioners of the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA).

This was the first Covid-19 related case of excessive pricing of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to be referred to the Competition Tribunal. The Tribunal found Babelegi guilty of excessive pricing (“price gouging”) on face masks and issued a fine of R76 000. Babelegi took the decision on appeal to the Competition Appeal Court (CAC). The case was essentially about the application of the amended section 8 of the Competition Act, which was being considered for the first time. The public importance of this case was in setting precedent for protecting the public against exploitation of circumstances like pandemics and national disasters in order to profit at the expense of people’s right to health and other human rights. Considering this public importance, Open Secrets and the Health Justice Initiative (HJI) applied to be admitted as amici along with the Human Rights Commission.

On the 13th of September 2022, Open Secrets and Unpaid Benefits Campaign (UBC) hosted a Peoples’ Hearing on Unpaid Pensions to provide a public forum for members of the public, community leaders and activists to reflect on the impact that the unpaid benefits issue has had on their lives and communities. The Hearing is an advocacy tool to advocate for justice and the payment of benefits of those who have struggled to claim their benefits due to a lack of urgency and a sustained failure to act to ensure that beneficiaries are paid by the FSCA (regulator), the financial services industry, government, parliament, trade unions and public sector benefit schemes.