KUGOMPO CITY- The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) Eastern Cape Region hosted a stakeholder engagement on Tuesday, 11 August 2026 at the Premier Hotel Regent in KuGompo City to mark 20 years of social grant administration and to address pressing service delivery challenges in the province.
Led by Regional Executive Manager(REM) Bandile Maqetuka, the event brought together government officials, non-governmental organisations (NGO’s), and community representatives to discuss fraud prevention, beneficiary reviews, grant payments and the role of strategic partners in supporting vulnerable communities.
In his keynote address, REM Maqetuka said SASSA was established following the landmark Mashava Constitutional Court judgment, which ruled that access to social assistance is a constitutional right that cannot be denied due to administrative failures or budget shortages.
He said over the past two decades the agency had made significant progress in standardizing services, improving audits, expanding technology, and banking the previously unbanked.
“Not a single beneficiary does not have a bank account as I’m standing here throughout the country,” Maqetuka said.
He emphasised that SASSA’s work is centered on people, not just numbers.
“It is about the elderly person who depends on an old grant to buy food and medication. It is about the child whose child support grant helps provide necessities,” he said.
Contributing to the discussions Programmes Manager at Masimanyane Women’s Rights International, Farida Myburgh, raised concerns about child support grants, disaster coordination and corporate responsibility.
On child support grants, Myburgh questioned how SASSA was addressing cases where grants were not reaching children.
“SASSA themselves raised the issue that a lot of the child support grants are ending up with the mothers and the children are not with those mothers… if a grandmother is living with the children, then she should be having access to the grants,” she said.
Myburgh said government departments were not coordinating and called for clarity on how communities and NGOs could report emergencies to avoid duplication.
“Government is working in silos. The one hand does not know what the other hand is doing. And that is where you get the challenge of duplication,” she said.
She also said banks needed to do more for Eastern Cape communities given the billions paid to them in grant fees, especially at a time of NGO funding cuts and rising gender-based violence.
Myburgh concluded that stakeholder platforms must look outward and ask, “what is the community need,” she said.
Maqetuka reiterated SASSA’s stance on fraud and corruption. He said fraud involving social grants was “not a victimless crime” and that every rand stolen was a rand taken from a vulnerable South African.
“When someone unlawfully diverts a grant meant for the poor, they may be taking food from a household. They may be taking medication from an elderly person. They may be taking support away from a child,” he said.
Maqetuka said the Eastern Cape had not been immune to these challenges. He revealed that from February 2025 to date, SASSA Eastern Cape had dismissed officials found to be allegedly involved in social grant fraud after internal processes. He said the agency was also dealing harshly with fraud both inside and outside the organisations.
“Most of these fraudulent activities are happening here at Amathole District,” he said, adding that SASSA was working closely with security agencies to “root out all these corrupt elements within our establishment.”
As SASSA marks 20 years under the theme ‘Restoring dignity and transforming lives’, Maqetuka said the agency remains committed to ensuring that every grant reaches the right person, at the right time and place. NJALO!
Photographs: Sthabile Sambela
By: Sthabile Sambela
12 August 2026
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