Social Grants Crisis: Magwaza and Dangor affidavits strengthen calls for parliamentary inquiry

11 April 2017

The DA will today submit the affidavits of former director-general of the Department of Social Development (DSD), Zane Dangor, and SASSA CEO Thokozani Magwaza to the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Social Development, Ms Rosemary Capa, to strengthen the call for a Parliamentary inquiry into the Social Grants Crisis.

The testimonies by Magwaza and Dangor, supports the DA’s long held belief that Minister Bathabile Dlamini deliberately bungled the process of procuring an alternative service provider to distribute the R10 billion in social grants payments, because she and her network of cronies could possibly benefit from the extension of the invalid CPS contract.

Yesterday, Zane Dangor filed an affidavit with the Constitutional Court in which he revealed that Dlamini “bypassed” departmental officials in order to ensure that CPS would continue to distribute social grants.

In fact, he stated that “parallel decision-making structures in the form of the work streams may have been deliberate to ensure a continued relationship with CPS under conditions favourable to CPS, through a self-created emergency”.

Dangor’s affidavit supports the affidavit filed by Thokozani Magwaza in which he suggested that Dlamini was determined to ensure that the distribution of social grants would not be institutionalised by SASSA, and “that since July 2015, the Minister had knowledge of inadequacies in SASSA to fulfil the objectives of the [Constitutional] court order”.

Dlamini has continued to dodge every effort to hold her accountable for the crisis she seemingly purposefully created and even survived Zuma’a midnight reshuffle despite her apparent failures. She has also attempted to lay the blame entirely at the feet of Magwaza and hardworking SASSA officials.

The DA believes that these affidavits strengthen the call for a full parliamentary inquiry into the debacle, which should be instituted to ensure that the Minister is held accountable for her reckless behaviour that threatened the only source of income for millions of poor South Africans.

Seeing that the President has completely failed to hold Dlamini to account, it is now up to Parliament to do so.

Issued by Bridget Masango, DA Shadow Minister of Social Development, 11 April 2017