ANC wants 30-million grant recipients to get free basic services

The ANC wants the almost 30-million South Africans who receive social grants to be automatically added to the indigent list of people who receive free basic services.

Instead of applying to receive free water, electricity and sanitation services every year, the party is promising that the database used by the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) to pay grants will be used by municipalities to automatically add recipients to the list of households eligible to receive free basic services.

This is contained in the ANC’s election manifesto, which party president Cyril Ramaphosa will officially launch on Sunday under the theme “Masakhe”, loosely translated as “Let us Build”.

The ANC’s manifesto promises that every household that is — through Sassa — receiving an old-age, disability, child support, care dependency or war veterans’ grant, as well as every child-headed household and every household registered for the social relief of distress grant (SRD), will “automatically be deemed indigent and enrolled for free basic water, electricity, sanitation and refuse removal”.

. (Nolo Moima) According to the manifesto: “No application. No queue. Delivered through a data-sharing agreement with the South African Social Security Agency.”

Sassa, through the department of social development, currently disburses social grants to around 28-million South Africans countrywide. This number includes 19-million who receive traditional grants — old age, child support and disability — as well as around 9-million who receive the monthly R370 SRD grant.

This means almost half of South African residents rely on social grants.

The indigent register in every ANC-led municipality will be a live digital register, linked to the valuation roll and to Sassa, not a paper list retyped each year. Enrolment will not expire after six months—  ANC manifesto

Currently, says the manifesto, R86.9bn has been budgeted for 2026/27 to fund free basic services, covering 11.2-million households at roughly R647 per household per month.

“A grandmother entitled to free basic water must find the municipal offices, produce documents, queue, and do it again next year — while the state already knows precisely who she is, because it pays her grant every month. The entitlement exists and the money is appropriated. What stands between them is a form,” reads the manifesto.

The register will also be automated to avoid people having to stand in queues every year.

“The indigent register in every ANC-led municipality will be a live digital register, linked to the valuation roll and to Sassa, not a paper list retyped each year. Enrolment will not expire after six months.”

A household would stay enrolled until either the municipality’s midterm audit of the register or a service-first verification trigger — a meter reading, a ward committee verification, a change in the valuation roll or a change recorded by Sassa — established that circumstances had changed.

WATCH | This ANC supporter says issues such as policing, schooling and youth unemployment are among the key concerns facing the Riverside community that he wants addressed at today’s manifesto launch.Video: Antonio Muchave pic.twitter.com/PueMSc20Ag— Sowetan (@Sowetan1981) August 23, 2026

“The onus shifts from the household to the municipality, where it belongs. Every ANC-led municipality will move from application-based to automatic indigent qualification … so that a household in a property below the published threshold qualifies without applying, without an income test and without renewal,” the manifesto states.

The central message is of a party that leads the national government and governs in seven of the nine provinces, which it claims places it in a much better position to help municipalities than any other party

The party wants to review the indigent policy within the first year after the elections, with a view to align the households that qualify with the value of benefits, measured against household food baskets, local transport costs and the earnings of the households concerned.

This is contained in the ANC’s election manifesto ahead of the 2026 local government elections on November 4. The central message is of a party that leads the national government and governs in seven of the nine provinces, which it claims places it in a much better position to help municipalities than any other party.

“Here is the plain difference in this election. A council on its own controls very little. The water scheme that will supply your town is a national project. The electrification of your extension sits in a national programme. The industrial zone that would bring work to your district is decided in a national ministry. The grant that pays your household’s free basic services is voted in the national budget,” Ramaphosa says in the manifesto.

“The ANC leads the national government and every province where these plans are made, and it chairs the table where they are co-ordinated — one lekgotla, one plan, through the district development model that joins national, provincial and municipal government around a single programme.“

When an ANC mayor asks for a bulk water line, she is not writing a letter to a stranger but to a comrade who planned that pipeline with her, Ramaphosa says.

“No other party in this election can say that. Every other party in this election can promise you what a council can do alone; we can promise you what a council can do when the whole of government moves with it,” Ramaphosa is quoted in the manifesto.