OPEN SECRETS: Digital Profiteers (Part 3): How combating fraud in SA’s digitalised grants system hurts the poor

This is the final instalment of a three-part series. Read Part One and Part Two. On 21 July 2026, newly appointed Minister of Social Development Dina Pule provided an update on the Department of Social Development (DSD) and the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) “Social Grant Review Process” programme. For the 2025/26 financial period, Sassa flagged more than 420,000 grant beneficiaries for review, and claimed it saved R1-billion as a result. For 2026/27, Sassa aims to review up to 350,000 grant beneficiaries with the aim of saving R1.5-billion for the government fiscus. This aligns with National Treasury’s 2026 Budget Review which emphasised the savings that these reviews offer the government. Pule emphasised: “The more we save, the more our people are covered with social assistance… reviews also protect the system against fraud, abuse and incorrect payments.”Pule has been in the job a month, but was a controversial appointment given her previous implication in serious corruption. In 2013, she was expelled from Cabinet after findings by the Public Protector and Parliament confirmed that she had acted unlawfully and unethically during her tenure as communications minister. The government is increasing vigilance on what it deems “abuse” of the social grants system by individual grant beneficiaries. In this last instalment of our three-part series, we unpack the risks in how the government is framing combating issues of fraud within the digital verification process of social grants, and how it is affecting grant recipients the most. Social Development Minister Dina Pule during as ANCWL briefing in July 2023. (Photo: Gallo Images / Papi Morake) An old playbook refined: What is considered fraud? On a bustling morning in the heart of Braamfontein, Johannesburg, in November 2025, Open Secret’s investigators conducted an interview with a pensioner we’ll refer to as “B”, a 67-year-old from the Makause informal settlement.With the help of #PaytheGrants activist General Moyo, B agreed to talk to Open Secrets on the record about the challenges he faced with the South African social grants system. We’ve chosen to anonymise B’s name to protect his identity while they continue correspondence with the company mentioned in this story. B spoke primarily in isiZulu, while Moyo translated. Since April 2024, B routinely had deductions for a funeral policy from an entity called African Unity from his old age pension grant despite never consenting to having a funeral policy. B’s account is as follows:At some point in April 2024, individuals describing themselves as “volunteers from Sassa” came to Makause claiming to have come to assist people to register for help with their Sassa grant review process. This assistance required giving their names, surnames, cellphone numbers and identity numbers. A month after these individuals “registered” B, he found that money was being deducted from his old age pension grant. When B went to Sassa’s Germiston office to inquire about the deduction, they informed him that he had a funeral policy in his name. B asked if Sassa could delete the funeral cover, but Sassa was not willing. B asked Sassa if they could print out the proof of his Sassa pension statement and the deductions from their system for him, which they did. However, the official who assisted him scratched out something on the document before handing it to him. The amount deducted for the African Unity funeral cover was R205 per month. At the time of the interview, the old age pension grant was R2310, so B was losing nearly 10% of his grant. South Africa’s social assistance regulation states that funeral and insurance premium deductions can only be made from older persons’ grants and disability grants. The deduction must not exceed 10% of grant value and it must be done through Sassa’s central grant payment system before any instruction is executed. Importantly, a deduction cannot take place without a beneficiary’s consent.By the time of our interview roughly R3,000 had been collectively deducted from his old age pension grant, although B estimated it could be more. The Sassa pension statement B showed to Open Secrets, dated February 2025, indicated that the policy deductions began between June and July 2024. It is unclear to B how this African Unity funeral policy gained access to his Sassa pension account, but the pension statement document appears to show that the deductions are taking place from a Sassa account. He collects his old age grant at Shoprite despite having opened a bank account in 2022, because he is unable to use an ATM.Despite having been registered for funeral cover, African Unity did not send B policy documents to sign or official communications on the policy. B said he had no way of making a claim for the funeral cover when he has no contact number with the company.Deductions without consentOpen Secrets presented B’s account to African Unity along with additional questions related to how the company is marketing its products, and asked for clarity on its disciplinary processes for internal misconduct. African Unity responded: “As a licensed and regulated insurer, we take all complaints and concerns raised by policyholders seriously and are committed to treating customers fairly. Where a policyholder or representative provides sufficient information to identify a matter, we will investigate it thoroughly and engage directly with the affected individual through the appropriate channels. Should the policyholder wish to engage with us directly, or should you provide the necessary information to enable us to identify and investigate the matter, we will consider it in accordance with our normal complaints and customer service processes.”During the interview, B called African Unity to ask if they could cancel the funeral cover and check if the funeral policy number on the printout document is real. The call assistant told B the funeral policy is administered by an entity called Ubuntu Life, not African Unity.On its website, Ubuntu Life states that African Unity underwrites – meaning takes on the risks of – all its funeral policies. We called Ubuntu Life and B requested the policy be cancelled. Ubuntu Life cancelled the policy and told B he could file a dispute with Ubuntu Life, saying the policy was taken without his consent, and receive a refund, indicating there may be a chance that he could get some of the deducted funds back. In July 2025, Newzroom Afrika ran an exposé on Ubuntu Life misleadingly registering social grant recipients for funeral policies under the guise of being associated with Sassa. The news report confirmed it is not associated in any way with the agency. Open Secrets asked African Unity and Ubuntu Life for comment on the exposé. African Unity declined and Ubuntu Life had not provided comment by the time of publication. B’s story is not an exception. In October 2025, GroundUp and the Limpopo Mirror published an investigation into insurance companies deducting money from old age grant recipients for funeral policies they did not consent to signing up to. In July 2026, eNCA’s CheckPoint published its two-part investigation series on Sassa insurance fraud, about grant recipients receiving deductions from funeral policies they did not consent to. Sassa has publicly urged grant recipients to report unusual deductions to the agency so that it can verify policies through a company called Qlink. But as demonstrated by B’s account, going to Sassa may not always be the most useful option.Review gapsThis type of predatory and unsolicited financial scheme has been a persistent issue in the South African social grant system since the Cash Paymaster Services and Net1 (now rebranded as Lesaka) scandal. As reported in the previous article, the introduction of multiple commercial banks and other third-party service providers in social grants administration has heightened these risks. But this type of fraud by financial service companies is not the focus of the DSD and Sassa’s social grants review programme. Rather, it is heavily focused on the conduct of individual grant applicants and beneficiaries. Sassa’s grant reviews focus heavily on the conduct of individual recipients. (Graphic: Shakeelah Ismail)The contracts between Sassa and the banks state that the agency uses the means test responses it receives from the banks, “together with other information collected by Sassa, to determine in Sassa’s sole discretion and in accordance with Sassa’s fraud risk assessment processes, whether the individual applicant is, or beneficiary remains, eligible to receive a Grant”. This fraud assessment includes additional checks against databases provided by credit bureaus, the Southern African Fraud Prevention Service, Experian and TransUnion. Yet, within the contracts there is no mention of protections of grant recipients’ data so that it is not used for financial product marketing by the banks and third-party service providers. The illicit marketing of loan and other financial products to social grant recipients and the subsequent deductions from their bank accounts due to a private company’s access to their financial data should be given far more extensive legal attention by the government. Especially because it continues to outsource the technological infrastructure of its digital verification systems to private actors. But this remains a big gap in the government’s fraud prevention strategy in the social grants system. Rather, fraud prevention strategies in the grants administration have an overwhelming focus on preventing fraud by grant recipients themselves. Biometric and income verification processes are deemed solid fraud prevention measures, but the reality is more complex. In their research on the government’s combating of fraud, the Institute of Economic Justice (IEJ) noted that the current anti-fraud measures used by the government produce wrongful suspensions and exclusions.Sassa’s reviews produce wrongful suspensions and exclusions, according to the IEJ. (Graphic: Shakeelah Ismail)This includes biometric failures that primarily impact elderly beneficiaries and women, and misinterpretations of one-off transfers in a bank account during income verification checks. The anti-fraud measures are needed but require urgent improvements to address these gaps. As stated by the IEJ:“Government has pledged to crack down on welfare fraud through intensified reviews, biometric verification, and big data surveillance. These anti-fraud measures overwhelmingly target the poor – piling suspicion and compliance requirements on normal beneficiaries, while allowing systemic corruption and predatory exploitation by private actors to persist.”The government’s crackdown on fraud in grants administration is saving it money, but its implementation focuses heavily on grant recipients without equal consideration of the potential fraud in the theft of grant recipients’ identity and unauthorised deductions from their accounts. Fraud is occurring in the social grants system but the grant recipients themselves are most affected by the harm it causes. The story of pensioner B is but one of many that indicates this growing risk.Conclusion The South African government is simultaneously attempting to combat fraud within the social grants space and ensure that grants are effectively administered for the public good. It has implemented a biometric and income verification system with commercial banks to implement its anti-fraud measures.However, a key gap in these measures continues to be the illicit use of recipients’ data without their consent to market financial products such as funeral policies. As the grants administration continues to be digitalised and more private actors enter the space, this gap must be addressed. DMNote: An AI transcription tool was used to transcribe the interviews conducted by Open Secrets in this investigation and the contents were verified by investigators. No AI was used in writing the article series.African Unity’s full right of reply response:“We note your request for comment and the various questions posed regarding our business and rather trite industry practices.“A significant portion of the questions raised are broad, generic and concern topics that are either commercially sensitive, publicly available, governed by legislation and regulation, or relate to general insurance principles rather than any specific conduct by our company. It is not our role to school your publication on the insurance industry, applicable legislation, or regulatory frameworks, nor to effectively research and write an article on behalf of your publication, which seems to be the case here.“We further note that your enquiry appears to be premised, at least in part, on allegations purportedly made by a policyholder. Despite our request for sufficient information to identify the individual concerned and investigate the matter, no such details have been provided. As a licensed and regulated insurer, we take all complaints and concerns raised by policyholders seriously and are committed to treating customers fairly. Where a policyholder or representative provides sufficient information to identify a matter, we will investigate it thoroughly and engage directly with the affected individual through the appropriate channels. However, we are unable to meaningfully respond to unspecified allegations, anonymous complaints, or hypothetical scenarios. Doing so would be inappropriate, would not allow for a fair and balanced assessment of the facts, and may prejudice the rights and privacy of those involved.“In the absence of sufficient particulars regarding the alleged complaint, we cannot comment further. Should the policyholder wish to engage with us directly, or should you provide the necessary information to enable us to identify and investigate the matter, we will consider it in accordance with our normal complaints and customer service processes.“Please note that we expressly reserve all our rights in relation to any publication that contains false, misleading, defamatory, incomplete, or inaccurate statements concerning AUL, our products, employees, representatives, or business practices.“We therefore respectfully decline to participate further in a discussion based on unidentified allegations and broad generalisations regarding the insurance industry.”Research contributions by Ra’eesa Pather and Cheriese Dilrajh. Graphic design by Shakeelah Ismail.