Financial Mail | 22 November 2021

The FM and Open Secrets on November 25 hosted an online discussion on the dangers of the ‘digital welfare state’

In April 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa introduced a raft of social assistance measures to provide relief to struggling South Africans as the economy took a battering from Covid. Among these was the R350-a-month social relief of distress grant, which for the first time brought unemployed adults aged 18 to 59 into the social security net.

Given the need for social distancing – and the fact that the new grant beneficiaries were not registered with the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) – private partners such as GovChat were brought on board to digitise the process.