Systemic exclusion from a South African social assistance transfer

Approximately half of the target population is excluded from a South African social assistance programme intended to provide income support to working-age adults—the Covid 19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant. To date research has not systematically investigated the drivers and mechanisms by which this exclusion occurs, nor the impacts of exclusion on the lives of affected persons. This study fills this gap by presenting the results of a survey of 900 people in the target population group who had experienced exclusion from the SRD grant in at least one month of a three-month reference period, and who nevertheless were living below the country’s upper-bound poverty line (unable to meet their basic needs). Our survey data is complemented by 58 in-depth interviews which elicit further insight into subjective experiences of exclusion. We find that a significant majority of our respondents (an average of 76% each month) met the eligibility criteria for the grant and thus were erroneously excluded. Exclusion occurred as a result of barriers to: application, accurate verification of eligibility via proxy-means testing, receiving payments after having been approved, and successfully appealing incorrect decisions. These barriers stemmed in large part from the rapid digitalisation and automation of the grant system without adequate transparency, oversight and accountability. We found that people who experienced existing forms of marginalisation, including digital exclusion, financial exclusion, gender inequality, spatial inequality, lack of access to identification documents, and immigration status, were most vulnerable to erroneous exclusion from the grant. In addition we found that exclusion from the grant resulted in severe hardship and hunger, as well as undermining livelihood activities and reinforcing a poverty trap. We propose a series of concrete policy recommend-dations to address unfair exclusion in the SRD grant system—but note that meaning-fully addressing exclusion is contingent on the adequate resourcing of the programme.