GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General
09 August 2026
National Treasury’s decision to appeal a Pretoria High Court ruling ordering government to increase and expand access to the Social Relief of Distress Grant is a disgraceful denial of the State’s constitutional obligations to provide income support to destitute people.
According to Treasury an expanded SRD grant would be unaffordable. This is a disappointingly reactionary and short-sighted position. The State can afford it by cutting fat, waste and corruption, and resorting to zero-based budgeting to prioritise spending.
If the State can wash its hands of its constitutional obligations on the basis of available cash, without re-developing its budgeting processes, the rights in the Constitution are not worth the paper they’re printed on.
Section 27 of the Constitution guarantees the right of access to social security, including appropriate social assistance, where citizens are unable to support themselves and their dependants. It obliges the State to take reasonable measures, within its available resources, to progressively realise that right.
A fiscal austerity posture that treats this obligation as negotiable gets the constitutional hierarchy backwards.
Since the SRD grant was first introduced as a temporary Covid-era measure, paying R350 a month, the GOOD Party has advocated for the grant to be migrated to a permanent Basic Income Grant.
GOOD campaigned for a B.I.G. of at least R999 a month for unemployed adults aged 18-60. This figure was pegged against the then-lower bound poverty line. Prior to launching the campaign GOOD commissioned independent economic research which confirmed that R999 was affordable.
It is affordable provided government moves to zero-based budgeting: building each year’s budget from actual current priorities rather than simply adjusting the previous year’s allocations. Such a budgetary process would naturally trim waste, fat and unessential spending.
Since then, the Institute for Economic Justice has set out costed, progressive financing options to fund a Universal Basic Income Guarantee. And, the Inclusive Society Institute’s 2023 feasibility study, using Reserve Bank data and macroeconomic modelling, separately concluded that a basic income grant set at the food poverty line for unemployed adults is comfortably affordable without the necessity for implementing a wealth tax.
That’s three independent studies, proposing three different routes to the money, arriving at one conclusion: The money can be found.
The blanket claim of unaffordability is a political choice dressed up as fiscal constraint.
Besides which, it’s a choice that directly contradicts government’s own long-term commitment, contained in the National Development Plan, setting 2030 as the deadline by which no South African should be living below the lower-bound poverty line (which was estimated at R945 a month in 2022, when GOOD commissioned its research).
GOOD calls on Treasury to withdraw its appeal, comply with the High Court’s findings, and use the upcoming Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement and 2027 Budget to set out a credible, funded pathway toward a permanent Basic Income Grant.
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