GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General
10 September 2025
The GOOD Party calls on the government to immediately remove all pre-qualification barriers to accessing the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant. In a society plagued by staggering unemployment, stagnant wages, and deepening inequality, social assistance must be designed to reach people quickly, not to exclude them through bureaucratic red tape.
The National Development Plan committed our government to ensuring that no South African lived below the lower bound poverty line by 2030. The lower bound poverty line was R1,109 per person, per month as of May 2024.
Having a job should not automatically exclude someone from financial relief, especially if their income does not meet a livable threshold. These are precisely the individuals the state should be supporting.
The findings of the latest SweepSouth Report reveal the devastating economic pressures faced by domestic workers, a workforce overwhelmingly made up of women. The report confirms that nearly 400,000 domestic worker jobs have been lost in recent years, with those remaining in the sector facing reduced hours, wages below the minimum, and crippling debt. This is not simply a cost-of-living crisis, for many, it is a crisis of survival.
At the same time, SASSA continues to delay or deny SRD payments, even to approved beneficiaries, due to technical barriers such as unverified banking details or pending identity verification. In many cases, recipients only discover months later that their grants were never deposited.
GOOD argues that rather than blocking access on the basis of incomplete paperwork or rigid criteria, the state should enable universal access upfront and then use its sophisticated post-verification systems, including SARS tax records and bank account reconciliation, to identify and recoup funds from those who received grants in error.
If the state has the capacity to audit ordinary South Africans through SARS, it certainly has the tools to reclaim SRD payments from the ineligible, without punishing the desperate majority who truly qualify.
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