SASSA'S NEW HOPE

Busisiwe Memela-Khambula is determined to get the beleaguered agency back on track for the millions of people who rely on grants to survive

- Khosi Biyela

THE poorest of the poor are counting on her. Children, struggling single parents, the elderly, people with disabilities – all those who can barely fend for themselves are looking to her to sort out the mess that has brought them to the brink of despair.

Busisiwe Memela-Khambula knows she has a gigantic job on her hands. Through more than 17 million grants she has millions of people relying on her to put food on the table and a backlog of issues stretching back to 2012.

“It hasn’t been easy,” the 61-year-old CEO of the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) admits.

“Last month was very frustrating for me. We thought we had everything under control but our system collapsed.”

Beneficiaries were turned away empty-handed because there was no money at pay points – an all-too-familiar experience for far too many people.

But she’s determined to turn things around, the former managing director of Postbank and the Land Bank says.

After “a lot of thinking and praying”, Busisiwe agreed to take on one of the toughest jobs in SA because she’s long believed the only solution to Sassa’s ongoing crisis is for the South African Post Office (Sapo) to handle the distribution of grant payments.

“When I was with Postbank we approached Sassa for business – we actually begged them but they turned us down multiple times,” she says.

At the time, Sassa had a contract with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) – a contract that was declared invalid by the Constitutional Court in 2014, leaving Sassa to review its payment model.

A bungled attempt by former social development minister Bathabile Dlamini for Sassa itself to manage the R10-billion payment contract resulted in chaos when the agency admitted it would not be able to do this when the CPS contract ended.