Big social grant changes from next month
The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) has announced that social grants will increase from October, in line with the 2025 budget.
Tabling the budget speech this year, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana announced a considerable above-inflation social grant increase from 1 April 2025, followed by a slight increase on 1 October 2025.
In the budget, which was the third iteration of the framework following wide rejection of a planned VAT hike, National Treasury had to do a fine balancing act.
In the initial budgets in February and March, Godongwana had planned to increase social grants by more than inflation for three years to counter the effect of a higher VAT rate.
However, when the planned additional revenue from the VAT hike fell away, so too did the plans for above-inflation hikes in the two outer years of the framework.
Nevertheless, the R1.6 billion increase in social grants for 2025/26 remained unchanged. Social grants were allocated R284.8 billion for 2025/26.
This figure is set to decrease over the next two years, with R259.7 billion allocated for 2026/27 and R271.4 billion for 2027/28.
From 1 October 2025, the social grant amounts will be increased by another R10:
- Old Age Grants will increase from R2,310 to R2,320
- Old Age Grants (older than 75 years) will increase from R2,330 to R2,340
- War Veterans Grant will increase from R2,330 to R2,340
- Disability Grant will increase from R2,310 to R2,320
- Care Dependency Grant will increase from R2,310 to R2,320
SASSA noted that the old age grant will be paid on 2 October 2025, disability grants on 3 October and children’s grants on 6 October.
More people on grants than working
In 2003, the proportion of individuals receiving social grants was 12.8%.
This increased to 30.9% in 2019 and surged to 40.1% in 2024 due to the introduction of the special Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant.
The R350 SRD grant was initially introduced as a temporary relief measure for struggling households during the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, it has been extended every year since and has been hiked to R370.
The SRD grant was again extended by a year in the latest budget to end March 2026, with R35.2 billion allocated to maintain the current R370 per month per beneficiary, including administration costs.
The government is working towards making the grant a permanent support fixture as part of its plans to introduce a basic income grant—though these plans are still very much up in the air.
Statistics South Africa’s 2024 General Household Survey (GHS) revealed that reliance on government funding is growing, with four of every 10 households in South Africa relying on state welfare.
Grants are the second most important source of income after salaries. More than one-fifth (23.8%) of households indicated that grants were their primary source of income.
However, this places a significant burden on South Africa’s much smaller tax base.
Looking at raw numbers SASSA’s annual report for the 2023/24 financial year revealed that it pays grants to 28 million South Africans.
The latest employment data from Stats SA shows that 16.8 million people are employed in the country.
While South Africa has about 26 million registered taxpayers, only about 7.9 million pay personal income tax. Even fewer, around 1 million people, or 1.5% of the population, pay 60.9% of all personal income tax.
Think tanks have previously tried to counter the narrative that social grants are a trade-off for finding work, arguing that payouts from the state actually enable job seekers to find work.
However, even the National Treasury has warned of creating a cycle of dependency through unconditional grants.
There have been proposal to move from planning a ‘basic income grant’ to a ‘jobseekers grant’, which is more conditional and limited, aimed at helping people find work, rather than paying money out in perpetuity.
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