Treasury called its own R370 grant a budget risk. It extended it anyway

R370.

That is still the monthly Social Relief of Distress grant, the SRD, paid to unemployed adults aged 18 to 59 who have no other income. About 7 million South Africans live on it. On 21 October, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana used his Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, the mini budget, to stretch it for another year. It is now funded to 31 March 2028.

In the same document, Treasury names growing that same grant one of the three biggest risks to the national budget.

Why did Treasury extend a grant it just called risky?

Treasury's mini budget calls the SRD a "material expenditure risk," alongside student funding through NSFAS and the public service wage bill. The danger is not the grant as it stands today. It is a court case.

Government is appealing a High Court ruling that would force it to widen who qualifies for the SRD. Treasury's own preliminary numbers say that if the ruling is upheld, it could add 3 million more people to the grant. That would push its yearly cost from about R36 billion to R74 billion, more than double.

The case was brought by the Institute for Economic Justice and the campaign group #PayTheGrants. In January 2025, the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria found that the SRD system had been designed in a way that unlawfully excluded millions of qualifying applicants. Government disputes that finding and took it to the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein, which heard the case on 25 August 2026.

At the centre of the fight is the grant's R624 means-test threshold, the income cut-off above which an application gets rejected. The Institute for Economic Justice says the system has a 33% database error rate, where people are wrongly excluded, and that 99% of appeals against rejection fail.

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So Treasury extended the grant it already pays out, in its current form, while fighting in court to stop that same grant from growing further. Both decisions sit in the same mini budget.

36.00R billionNow, as extended

74.00R billionIf court ruling stands

Now, as extended	36.00R billion
If court ruling stands	74.00R billion

Source: National Treasury, 2026 Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, 21 October 2026. The higher figure is Treasury's own preliminary estimate if the pending High Court ruling on SRD eligibility is upheld on appeal.

How many people actually get R370, and what does it cost?

About 7 million people were being paid the SRD grant by September, Treasury told Parliament. That is fewer than it had originally budgeted for.

Treasury Director-General Duncan Pieterse told Parliament his department keeps finding fraud in applications. People understate what they earn, and bank records catch them out. That tighter checking, along with fewer new child support grant applications as birth rates fall, saved government about R13 billion over the next few years.

That saving is not going back into the SRD grant. It is funding more than 3,500 new social workers and maternal and child health programmes instead.

Photo: Nick-D / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

How far has R370 fallen behind since 2020?

The grant began at R350 in May 2020, during the Covid lockdowns. It has been raised only once since, by R20, to R370 from April 2024. It has not moved a cent since.

Prices have not stood still. Using Stats SA's own yearly inflation figures, prices are now about 37% higher than they were in 2020. That means today's R370 buys roughly what R270 bought when the grant launched, even counting the one increase.

Cumulative price rise compounds Stats SA's reported annual CPI inflation for 2020 to 2025 with the 4.5% rate recorded for the year to September 2026. The last column divides the grant's nominal value by that cumulative price rise. For what R370 buys against today's fuel and food prices, see what the frozen SRD grant buys now.

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So even the one real increase the grant ever got, in 2024, only lifted it back toward where it had already fallen from in 2020 money. It did not keep pace since.

Why is there still no permanent replacement grant?

President Cyril Ramaphosa floated turning the SRD into a permanent "Livelihood Grant" months ago. Godongwana had promised the mini budget would spell out what that new grant would look like.

It did not. The Department of Social Development is still refining its proposal to Cabinet, and Treasury told Parliament there are "no fixed timelines" for finishing it. A separate basic income white paper is only expected by the end of 2026.

So for the sixth time, a grant that began as a six-month Covid measure gets extended one more year, while the decision on what finally replaces it keeps moving.

Photo: Andres de Wet / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Who is actually paying for the R370 grant?

About 8.3 million people are expected to pay income tax this year, SARS and Treasury's own numbers show. See how South Africa's tax base rests on a thin slice of people who carry most of that load.

That is barely more than the 7 million people being paid the SRD grant every month. Almost one taxpayer funds every person on a grant that Treasury's own budget just called a major danger to the finances that pay for it.

The mini budget also moved other numbers that hit household budgets, from the fuel levy to the old age grant, covered in our full breakdown of what the mini budget cost you.

If you already get the SRD, nothing changes for now. The amount, R370, and the R624 income cut-off stay the same at least until March 2028, and the Supreme Court of Appeal's ruling could still move that cut-off either way.

Treasury has now written, in its own budget document, that making this grant bigger is one of the biggest dangers facing the country's finances. It has also just made the grant last another year. The next date that matters is 31 March 2028, and nobody in Pretoria has said yet what happens when it arrives.