The ANC Women’s League (ANCWL) on Friday said it “unashamedly rejects” any proposal that the payment of SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) grants could be outsourced to a major commercial banks.

The leader of the ANCWL and the social development minister, Bathabile Dlamini, on Thursday rejected Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s proposal for banks and the SA Post Office to distribute social grants to the country’s 17 million beneficiaries.

Dlamini has approached the Constitutional Court to seek an extension of her department’s use of Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) to continue dispensing pensions and grants when CPS’s contract ends on March 31.

The minister said the proposal to distribute R10 billion in monthly grants through the banks and post offices was not practical.

The ANCWL later weighed in, saying “major commercial banks in South Africa have proven their untrustworthiness and greediness through various unethical behaviour, which among others, has been reported by the Competition Commission”.

In a statement issued late Thursday, the ANCWL made reference to this week’s Competition Commission announcement that it had referred 17 banks to its Tribunal for prosecution in a matter involving alleged collusion in foreign exchange deals.

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“It is the ANCWL’s view that transformation of the financial sector cannot be postponed any further,” said the league.

“Outsourcing the payments for Sassa grants to any of the major commercial banks in South Africa will be against the call for radical transformation of the financial sector.”

The ANCWL said it was calling on the ANC-led government to establish a State Bank as a long-term solution to transform the financial sector.

It said such a move would dismantle the “monopolisation of the financial sector … the ANC-led government must also support establishment of wholly black-owned banks with no less than 50% of women ownership”.

The ANCWL said the narrative of a looming crisis in the payment of grants “was being driven by the defenders of monopoly capital who would want to see Sassa outsourcing the services to one of the major banks in the country”.

The ANCWL urged the social development department’s agency Sassa to urgently intensify its outreach activities countrywide, meet with social grant beneficiaries and assure them that the payment of social grants would not be affected.

“The ANCWL supporters and members will not support any proposal to outsource payments of Sassa grants to any of the major commercial banks in SA. Support to such plan will be a conscious sabotage to the radical socio-economic transformation agenda.”

– African News Agency (ANA)