How many deaths will be on Dlamini’s head?

The idea of some of the more than R10 billion that gets distributed every month to South Africa’s welfare recipients being sent out into our countryside on April 1 in “cash trucks” boggles the mind.

Imagine it. We live in one of the most crime-ridden countries on earth, and sending all these trucks on these perilous journeys into Mordor (or Mafikeng) perfectly illustrates the state of what one could very generously call a brain in Bathabile Dlamini’s head.

The social development minister will perhaps be our champion fool come April Fool’s Day.

Sending billions in cash all over South Africa’s roads next month will be a little like dropping a bleeding sheep into a tank full of hungry sharks.

Even if many of these trucks manage to get to little places like Mbazwana, Bathurst and Reddersburg, can you imagine the mayhem of AK-47s and bloodshed at the pay points themselves when the cash is finally being dispensed? That was among the reasons the decision was taken to pay social grant recipients directly into bank accounts, because we used to be confronted regularly with news of social grant pay points being robbed.

Even now, we are still confronted with stories of these crimes. Just yesterday, a Sassa pay point in Bonteheuwel was reportedly robbed. It will become unimaginably worse when the cash trucks start rolling.

Perhaps the real irony here is that the company entrusted to make the payments to the poor, Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), has regularly been accused of being a bit of a robber itself. Black Sash has been complaining for ages about allegedly illegal deductions being made from recipients’ money. Apparently, side companies linked to CPS offer recipients loans against the grant money.

But the Constitutional Court ruled years ago already that any deduction from grant money is illegal.

At least that kind of robbery won’t happen with the cash trucks.

Supposedly, though, the trucks will be a last resort to ensure the poorest and most vulnerable don’t starve, since Sassa seems to think that 90% of the 17 million people who receive grants have accounts with Grindrod Bank, so they might be able to pay them that way. Ha. Maybe they can just SMS them the money, since I’d stake my life that almost all of them have cellphones.

However this thing pans out (and it will probably end with CPS being bad a kidnappers’ ransom to keep paying out the money), Dlamini deserves to be fired.

In any decent country with a half-decent president, she would have been kicked to the kerb long ago. But all President Jacob Zuma could muster this week was the giggly comment that his chosen minister and her agency are being “a little bit irresponsible”.

She’s obviously too valuable to Zuma in ensuring his anointed successor, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, gets elected president following him. Remember how Dlamini very memorably responded to a question in New York (her department spent R121.5 million on travel in 2015) about Zuma and the Gupta family?

She said everyone in the ANC NEC has their “small skeletons and we don’t want to take all the skeletons out because hell will break loose”?

Obviously she’s trusting in the fact that she and Zuma can rely on the dirt they have on everyone else to continue to get away with murder.

Also remember that this is the same woman who spent 31 nights at the luxurious Oyster Box Hotel in Durban last year, costing thousands every night, not long after informing us that R753 should be enough for a South African family to live on every month.

What admirable company you keep, Dlamini-Zuma. What a person to have as your cheerleader. What a fantastic reference for your presidential ambitions.

At this point, I really don’t care if the next president is a man or a woman.

I think I’m not alone in simply longing to be led by a decent human being.

Charles Cilliers, Citizen.co.za digital editor

ALSO READ:

https://www.citizen.co.za/news/news-national/zuma-calls-sassa-a-little-bit-irresponsible/

Cash trucks touted as possible plan B to pay social grants