DSDnewsSA MUST FIND WAYS TO LINK SOCIAL ASSISTANCE TO ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES

By Staff Reporter.

Opening a policy colloquium, Minister of Social Development, Sisisi Tolashe, called on delegates to find ways to redesign South Africa’s social protection systems to not only provide relief in times of need but create opportunities for sustainable livelihoods.
The colloquium is currently taking place in Sandton under the theme “From grants to growth: Integrating social protection and income-generating opportunities”.
For too long, social protection has been framed as poverty relief, and what is needed now is a new narrative that views social protection as human capital investment.

For years, South Africa’s social assistance programme has stood as a powerful defence against poverty and destitution, but it is now time to move beyond that and link these programmes with economic opportunities, says Minister of Social Development, Sisisi Tolashe.

The minister was speaking at the start of a two-day policy colloquium taking place in Sandton from 28 – 29 October 2025 under the theme “From grants to growth: Integrating social protection and income-generating opportunities”.

The colloquium is being held at a decisive moment in history, the minister noted, with South Africa taking up the presidency of the G20 over the past year. “This is an unprecedented milestone considering that it is the very first time that an African nation leads the influential global economic forum.”

“South Africa’s G20 presidency takes place at a moment in which the world is facing severe challenges. The climate change crisis is worsening. Across the world, billions of people are affected by underdevelopment, inequality, poverty, hunger and unemployment that is worsened by the rising cost of living,” Minister Tolashe said.

However, she noted, years of progress in reducing abject poverty, improving education and health outcomes had declined due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing geopolitical tensions that continue to disrupt the global economy and threaten to reverse human development gains.

“South Africa’s G20 presidency provides us with a platform to put all these challenging issues on the agenda of the global economic forum.”

Minister Tolashe noted that less than five years were remaining to achieve the ambitious goals of the National Development Plan (Vision 2030) and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

“We must recognise our progress and the urgent challenges remaining that demand our collective action.”

The question that should be uppermost in the minds of the delegates at the colloquium should be “how we redesign our social protection systems so that it does not only provide relief at the time of need but also uplift and create opportunities for sustainable livelihoods”.

The government had developed extensive policies focused on redress and redirection of state resources to serve the needs of all South Africans since the advent of democracy.

In 2002, a comprehensive review of our social protection system took place, with the government agreeing to create a package of social protection benefits to tackle poverty in all its manifestations.

“This meant that our system would need to not only alleviate poverty, but also take on preventive, promotive and developmental approaches to create sustainable and inclusive growth.”

Minister Tolashe pointed out: “For years now, our social assistance programme has stood as a powerful defence against poverty and destitution.”

More than 25 million South Africans, or 40%, now depend on social grants for their survival. “These are not just numbers: behind each figure is a mother putting food on the table, a youth holding on to hope, a grandparent caring for grandchildren, a community that refused to give up.”

While South Africa should acknowledge and celebrate its success in restoring hope where there was hopelessness and in restoring dignity and breaking the cycle of poverty, the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey Figures were a sobering reminder of the deepening crisis facing the country.

“These challenges call on governments to create more innovative solutions to achieve their economic and social objectives. It is for this reason that we are beginning to link social assistance programmes with economic opportunities.”

When a household received a grant, it was often used immediately to meet the basic needs of food, water, electricity, transport, and school fees.

“But evidence is growing that many recipients also use it as a springboard, for micro entrepreneurship, investing in their livelihoods, drawing on their resourcefulness, ingenuity and spirit of resilience to sustain themselves and families, despite the odds stacked against them.”

The minister noted that over the last decade, South Africa’s GDP growth averaged 0.7% a year, constrained by structural issues like high unemployment, jobless growth, electricity crises and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Low growth and high unemployment exacerbated the poverty and inequality levels in South Africa, resulting in more than 18 million grant recipients for the Child Support Grant, Care Dependency Grant, Disability Grant and Old Age Grant.

Between seven and eight million beneficiaries who struggle to find work are forced to rely on R370 Social Relief of Distress, which is less than R12.33 a day.

“This was meant to be a temporary provision,” the minister said, adding, “but we have since extended it due to challenges faced by this category of beneficiaries. Ordinarily, this target group, meaning those between 18-59 would be participating in the labour market.”

She emphasised: “Unless we can grow our economy at a much faster pace, we will not be able to meet all our social protection goals.”

Social grants were not enough; there was a need to build an environment that promotes economic inclusion, leveraging these grants, so that they are not just lifelines of desperation.

“We need to think about how we can support our beneficiaries by linking them to a myriad of government initiatives and services that we have, so that we can move them closer to the labour market and on a trajectory that creates sustainable livelihoods or income-generating opportunities.”

Various active labour market policies have been and continue to be driven by various departments to promote inclusion of all people in economic and social activity, providing an important avenue for labour absorption and income transfers to poor households.

“Important questions that we are hoping to obtain answers from this gathering are: can these programmes absorb all social grant beneficiaries of a working age, and if ‘Yes’, how do we ensure that they are accessible to social grant beneficiaries of a working age. Finally, what are the roles of various government departments in ensuring that we arrive at our destination?”

The informal economy and micro-entrepreneurship

Minister Tolashe said that too often grants were viewed purely through the lens of beneficiaries and recipients, but many of those were also micro-entrepreneurs, informal traders, and service providers in townships and rural areas.

“The informal economy in South Africa is estimated at nearly 25% of the GDP and employs around 19,5% of the workforce, the majority of which is women. The low levels of informality, whether accurately measured or not by Statistics South Africa, highlight a sector that is woefully inadequate relative to our income level,” Minister Tolashe said.

“If we can link the vast reach of our grant system with viable livelihoods and other opportunities from across the entire government ecosystem, we can create a dual dividend, that of social protection and economic participation.”

What that meant was designing a “cash plus” framework, where the social grant system creates a backbone for those most vulnerable and is complemented by access to custom-designed services, which includes access to training, business support, market linkages, digital platforms, mentorship, finance, employment and intermediation services, and even support services – “not conditionality in a punitive sense, but enabling pathways, that progressively create agency that empower our most vulnerable people”.

Productivity, prosperity, and dignity

Social protection has been framed as poverty relief for too long. “We need a new narrative, one that views social protection as human capital investment, relief plus opportunity, support plus agency.”

Minister Tolashe proposed three core pillars:
•⁠ ⁠Productivity, where the grant is the anchor, allowing employment and intermediation services to scaffold on top of the grant. This creates a linkage between the grant and productive opportunities, including access to a large number of active labour market programmes, livelihood opportunities, and creating pathways and agency for these individuals over time.
•⁠ ⁠Prosperity, where the goal is not just to survive, but to thrive. By connecting grants to livelihood opportunities, the aim is to move households from barely getting by to generating income, investing, saving, and growing. “This is indeed an ambitious task, but we need to start with a vision of what we want to achieve over the next five to 10 years. We need to take a longer-term view to investing in the most vulnerable people in our country, rather than taking a short-term, myopic view of incremental budgeting that doesn’t allow us to plan effectively, build services, not promote certainty or security.”
•⁠ ⁠Human dignity sits at the heart of this not as charity, but as empowerment. A system that respects choice, fosters agency, values work, and creates opportunities and an enabling environment that allows every vulnerable South African to contribute and participate in their own development and our national economy.

A call to action

“The time for incremental tinkering is over,” Minister Tolashe said, adding that the design of the next generation of South Africa’s social protection system must be transformative.

The minister urged delegates to think about how to link social protection systems with sustainable livelihood opportunities.

This requires critical steps:
•⁠ ⁠The redesign of the grant delivery systems through a suite of policy reforms so that a grant recipient can be connected to a livelihood opportunity, embedding livelihood support into the grant architecture – not as an afterthought, but as a core design, through the “Grant + Service”, which leverages the digital transformation roadmap launched in April 2025.
•⁠ ⁠Data and system reforms that address the governance reforms necessary to enable the next phase of South Africa’s social protection policy.

“We are at a pivotal moment. Our social grants system is a national asset, and should be viewed as an investment, a demonstration of solidarity, of state responsibility, of human dignity,” the minister said.

“But if it does not evolve to meet the critical challenges of our times, we risk creating a cycle of dependency. If we harness it, we can build a system that catalyses livelihoods, unleashes entrepreneurial energy, and generates inclusive growth for all.”

Minister Tolashe urged the delegates to commit to building a social protection system that is forward-looking; a comprehensive social protection system envisaged in the NDP-Vision 2030. “This is a system that turns grants into growth; that turns support into opportunities; that turns recipients into contributors.”