Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan delivered some good news to the country's poorest, announcing an increase in social grants that would bring total expenditure in this area to R490.4-billion. But the devil is in the detail: there was no allocation to cover the Social Development Ministry's SASSA conundrum, and there are nagging questions about how the allocations of social grants will interact with the proposed national minimum wage. By MARELISE VAN DER MERWE.
In theory, the allocation of both social grants and a national minimum wage amount to a good thing, reducing inequality, alleviating poverty and increasing spending power among the country's poorest, whether they are employed or not.
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