‘Must work to stay alive’: South Africans defend working SASSA recipients

While many South Africans criticised grant recipients following the R31 000 SASSA repayment story, others raised a different concern entirely: why pensioners earning substantial salaries are able to claim grants at all.

June Pillay questioned SASSA’s enforcement directly, asking why the agency does not investigate companies employing pensioners who reportedly earn as much as R10 000 a month while still collecting SASSA payments, and why oversight bodies do not check employer records more closely.

Others say grant amounts don’t cover survival

Carole Jones Delcie pushed back against the idea that claiming a grant while working reflects greed, arguing instead that SASSA payments simply are not enough to cover a household’s basic needs.

“Some have to work to be able to survive otherwise it’s out on the streets,” she wrote, a view shared by pensioners’ rights groups who have previously marched to demand the Older Person’s Grant be increased from R2 400 to R5 000 a month.

A stark reality facing older South Africans

Johan Willemse summed up the sentiment shared by several commenters in blunt terms: “Old people must work to stay alive.” His comment reframes the debate around SASSA’s compliance crackdown, suggesting that for many elderly South Africans, holding down a job alongside a grant is less about exploiting the system and more about basic survival amid rising living costs.

SASSA maintains that its review process exists to protect the integrity of the grant system, having already flagged hundreds of thousands of cases nationally. But as these comments show, many South Africans believe the deeper issue lies not with beneficiaries bending the rules, but with grant values that have failed to keep pace with the cost of living.

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