R370 Grant Temporary: Why It’s Still Here After 6 Years

As an R370 grant temporary measure, nine million people still depend on a monthly payment government has never stopped calling an emergency measure. On 25 August, the Supreme Court of Appeal decides how much longer “temporary” can hold.

When government introduced the Social Relief of Distress grant in May 2020, it came with an expiry date. R350 a month, paid to unemployed adults for six months, enough to bridge the worst of the Covid-19 lockdowns until the economy found its feet again. That was the plan. Six months came and went. So did six years.

The R370 grant temporary measure is now funded until 31 March 2027 through an extra R36.4 billion in this year’s budget, and paid to roughly nine million people, according to reporting around this month’s appeal hearing, though Treasury built its 2026/27 budget around a working estimate of about eight million recipients. Whichever figure ends up closer to the mark, it is a lot of people relying on a grant the law still treats as a stopgap.

On 25 August, the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein hears government’s bid to overturn a High Court ruling that found large parts of the SRD system unconstitutional. The case will not settle the bigger question of whether R370 a month should exist at all. But it forces into the open the argument South Africa’s government has been avoiding since 2020: who deserves support, how much, and how the state affords it without breaking something else.

R370 Grant Temporary: Six Months, Then Nine Extensions

Nothing about the SRD grant’s design assumed it would still exist in 2026. It was built under the Disaster Management Act as an emergency response, not through the ordinary legislative process that creates a permanent grant. Every extension since has been a separate decision, made one budget cycle at a time.

What the Supreme Court of Appeal Is Actually Deciding

The case going to Bloemfontein was brought by the Institute for Economic Justice and #PayTheGrants, represented by the Socio-Economic Rights Institute, against the Minister of Social Development, SASSA and National Treasury. It is not a dispute about whether the SRD grant should exist. Government accepts that it should, at least for now. The fight is over how it is run.

Judge Twala’s January 2025 ruling, handed down in the Pretoria High Court, formally the Gauteng Division, Pretoria and still sometimes called the North Gauteng High Court, found three separate problems. First, that verifying applicants’ income purely through bank data was unreliable and excluded people it should not have. Second, that requiring every application to go through an online portal, with no walk-in alternative, unfairly shut out people without reliable internet or smartphone access. Third, that R370 a month was itself inadequate, given that SASSA already uses R624 a month as the income ceiling for who qualifies in the first place.

That last point is easy to miss and worth sitting with. SASSA turns away anyone earning more than R624 a month on the basis that R624 is roughly what a person needs to avoid destitution. It then pays approved applicants R370, a full R254 short of that same line. Judge Twala ordered the payment raised to close that gap. Government disagrees that the court had the power to order a specific rand amount at all, arguing that setting grant values is a budget decision for the executive and Parliament, not the courts. That argument, more than the individual facts of any one beneficiary’s case, is what the Supreme Court of Appeal will weigh on 25 August.

Because the department was granted leave to appeal, none of Judge Twala’s orders currently apply. The grant is still R370, the application system is still online-only, and bank verification is still how SASSA checks whether someone qualifies. Whatever the Supreme Court of Appeal decides, this is unlikely to be the final word either. Both sides have signalled they are prepared to take an unfavourable outcome to the Constitutional Court.

The Arithmetic Treasury Doesn’t Say Out Loud

Nobody involved in this case, on either side, argues that the R370 grant temporary payment is generous. The Institute for Economic Justice has pointed out that if the original R350 had simply tracked headline inflation since 2020, it would already be worth more than R470. A tracked basket of 14 basic food items cost R414.86 in June 2026, already R44.86 above what the grant actually pays. R370 buys less than it did when the grant launched, not more.

The difficulty is what happens when a small increase gets multiplied by millions of people, every month, indefinitely. Using the figures both sides don’t dispute, roughly nine million approved beneficiaries at R370 a month works out to just under R40 billion a year, in line with the R36.4 billion Treasury has actually budgeted. Move that same nine million people to R624, the amount Judge Twala ordered, and the annual bill climbs to around R67 billion. That is over R27 billion more a year, every year, before counting anyone newly eligible if the income threshold itself also rises, which the ruling separately orders government to work toward.

A once-off emergency grant does not need next year’s Treasury to find the money again. A permanent one does, and the year after, and the year after that. That is the distinction government keeps returning to in court papers and budget speeches alike: not whether people need more, but whether the fiscus can commit to paying more indefinitely without cutting something else or raising taxes to cover it.

The People Fiscal Caution Doesn’t Explain

Civil society’s counter-argument is not really about the rand value. It is about people who qualify and still don’t get paid. The Institute for Economic Justice surveyed 900 people living in poverty who had previously experienced exclusion from the grant and found that only 10.3% of that group had received a payment in the month they applied, an average monthly exclusion rate among eligible respondents of 89.7%. The researchers are explicit that the sample was chosen because these were people who had already struggled with the system, so the figure cannot be read as the national exclusion rate. What it does show is how badly things can go wrong when they go wrong.

One case documented by Open Secrets and Daily Maverick illustrates the mechanism. Buhle Sibya, a KwaZulu-Natal woman who had received the grant since March 2021, was declined in January 2023 after SASSA’s bank verification flagged additional income in her account. That income was R1,000 sent by relatives to help bury her mother, who had just died. To a person, a burial contribution and a salary are obviously different things. To an automated system tallying every rand that enters an account each month, they look identical.

SASSA has contracted six commercial banks, Absa, African Bank, FNB, Nedbank, Standard Bank and Tyme Bank, to run these monthly income checks for as long as the current agreement lasts, through July 2027. Brenton van Vrede, SASSA’s executive manager of grants operations, told Open Secrets investigators the agency turned to bank data because its own public databases, including SARS tax records that can lag by as much as 18 months and UIF records that depend on employers updating them consistently, were producing errors of their own. He conceded the fix introduced a problem of its own, one captured in the quote below.

This publication has previously reported that the R624 income threshold already sits below what most households need to cover basic essentials, and that a purely online application system disproportionately affects the roughly 14% of eligible South Africans without reliable internet access, according to figures cited by advocacy groups covering the appeal. In August 2026, the Institute for Economic Justice publicly called on SASSA to reopen in-person applications for exactly that reason, ahead of the Bloemfontein hearing.

Does R370 a Month Stop People Looking for Work?

The objection surfaces in almost every conversation about turning the SRD grant into something permanent. If government pays people whether or not they are employed, does that reduce the incentive to find a job? The evidence specific to the SRD grant does not support a simple yes. Research into the grant found that receiving it was associated with a 2.9 to 3.5 percentage point increase in the probability of being employed, not a decrease.

The mechanism is not complicated once you account for what job hunting actually costs. Taxi fare to an interview costs money. Mobile data to submit an online application costs money. Printing a CV costs money. A phone with enough airtime to be reachable when an employer calls back costs money. R370 is nowhere close to replacing a salary, but for someone with zero rand, it can be the difference between applying for a job and being physically unable to get there.

What the grant cannot do is manufacture jobs that do not exist. South Africa’s official unemployment rate stood at 33.6% in the second quarter of 2026, according to Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey. A R370 grant can help someone search harder for work. It has no mechanism for creating the vacancy they are searching for.

Why Not Just Make It Permanent Already?

Government’s own long-term answer is not to keep extending the SRD grant indefinitely but to replace it. Two overlapping processes are underway, and beneficiaries could be forgiven for losing track of which is which.

The first is a Livelihoods Support Grant, floated by the Department of Social Development and referenced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in the 2026/27 budget cycle as a shift from unconditional relief toward support tied to job-seeking, skills training or participation in programmes like the Expanded Public Works Programme. Public consultation on the proposal closed on 30 April 2026 with more than 45,000 submissions received. No implementation date, eligibility criteria or payment amount has been finalised. Government has said final details are expected around the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement later in 2026.

The second, older process is a universal Basic Income Support policy, distinct from the Livelihoods Support Grant proposal, that the Department of Social Development first tabled before Cabinet in November 2024. Cabinet sent it back, instructing the department to strengthen its links to employment and economic inclusion measures. A revised version, shaped by a June 2025 consultation with the departments of employment and labour, public works and small business development, has since been shared with National Treasury and the Presidency.

As of February 2026, the department was aiming to resubmit a final policy to Cabinet by March 2027, the same month the current SRD funding runs out. Members of Parliament have openly criticised how slowly this has moved, given that millions of people are living without the certainty a permanent grant would provide in the meantime.

Researchers and civil society groups have pushed back on the employment-linked conditions running through both proposals, arguing that requiring beneficiaries to prove job-seeking activity misreads why people need the grant in the first place. The tension is structural, not personal. Loosen the rules and the programme becomes more expensive and harder to defend to Treasury. Tighten them and the same exclusion problems currently before the Supreme Court of Appeal have every chance of reappearing under a new name.

The Constitutional Clause Neither Side Can Escape

Section 27 of South Africa’s Constitution guarantees everyone the right to access social security, including social assistance for those unable to support themselves and their dependants. That right is not unlimited. Courts have long read it alongside the state’s obligation to act within available resources, progressively expanding access rather than delivering everything immediately.

That is precisely why this keeps ending up in court rather than getting settled in Parliament. Section 27 gives the Institute for Economic Justice and #PayTheGrants solid constitutional ground to argue government cannot simply design the SRD grant however is administratively convenient. It gives National Treasury an equally solid basis to argue that progressive realisation does not mean immediate delivery or however much a court decides is fair. Both readings are legitimate. Neither resolves the underlying disagreement over exactly where the line between them sits, which is why it keeps landing in front of judges instead of being settled once by legislation.

What This Means for You Right Now

Common Questions About the R370 Grant and the Court Case

Q1. Is the R370 grant temporary measure becoming a permanent grant?

Not yet, and not automatically. It remains a temporary measure extended one budget cycle at a time, currently funded to 31 March 2027. Government has signalled it wants to replace it with a permanent Livelihoods Support Grant or Basic Income Support policy, but neither has been finalised.

Q2. What is the Supreme Court of Appeal actually ruling on 25 August?

Whether the Pretoria High Court was correct to declare the SRD grant’s bank verification process, online-only application system and R370 payment amount unconstitutional. The hearing itself does not automatically change the grant. Judgment typically follows weeks or months after a hearing of this kind.

Q3. Why is R624 mentioned alongside R370? Are they the same thing?

No. R624 a month is the income ceiling SASSA already uses to decide who qualifies for the grant. R370 a month is what an approved applicant actually receives. Judge Twala’s High Court ruling ordered the payment raised to match the R624 threshold, which is currently suspended pending the appeal.

Q4. Does receiving the SRD grant discourage people from looking for work?

Research specific to the grant found the opposite association, a 2.9 to 3.5 percentage point increase in employment probability among recipients, most likely because the grant covers some of the direct costs of job hunting rather than replacing the incentive to find work.

Q5. What is the Livelihoods Support Grant, and is it replacing the SRD grant now?

It is a proposed successor grant that would link support to job-seeking or skills activity. Public consultation closed on 30 April 2026 and government is still reviewing more than 45,000 submissions. No date, amount or eligibility rule has been confirmed, and the SRD grant continues unchanged until any new system is formally in place.

Strip away the legal argument and the SRD grant’s real story is simpler and harder to fix. South Africa created it because millions of people suddenly had no income during a once-in-a-century emergency. The emergency passed. The joblessness behind it did not. Government has spent six years extending a stopgap instead of legislating a permanent replacement, not out of indifference, but because every version of a permanent answer costs billions more than the temporary one and still leaves someone outside the qualifying line.

The Supreme Court of Appeal’s decision, whenever it lands, will not resolve that trade-off. It will only decide who gets to make the next call, judges or Treasury, on how far R370 has to stretch while South Africa keeps arguing about what should replace it. Six years in, that argument is no longer really about an emergency grant at all. It is about how long a country can call something temporary before the word stops meaning anything.