The early morning darkness blankets the Eastern Cape as Nomsa Mbatha, 72, joins the growing queue outside the SASSA office in Mthatha.
It’s 4:30 AM, and she’s brought a small folding chair, two sandwiches wrapped in newspaper, and a thermos of rooibos tea.
Today marks her third attempt this month to resolve issues with her expired SASSA gold card.
“The first time, the system was down,” she tells me, adjusting the colorful doek covering her gray hair.
“The second time, the queue was so long they closed before I could be helped.”
Around her, dozens of other seniors, some with walking sticks and others accompanied by younger relatives, form a line that will grow exponentially by sunrise.
They represent just a fraction of the millions of South Africans navigating the country’s massive transition from the now-expired SASSA gold cards to a new payment system – a change that has created both opportunities and challenges for the nation’s most vulnerable citizens.
The End of an Era: Why the Gold Cards Expired
The distinctive gold-colored SASSA cards, once a symbol of South Africa’s progressive social grant system, are now obsolete, having reached the end of their contractual lifespan in December 2024.
The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) issued these cards in partnership with the South African Post Office (SAPO) and Postbank as part of a 2018 agreement designed to remove the controversial private payment provider Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) from the grant distribution system.
“The gold card contract was always intended to be temporary,” explains Dr. Bongani Mkhize, a social policy researcher at the University of Cape Town who has studied South Africa’s grant payment evolutions.
“SASSA was given a five-year timeframe to develop internal capacity and systems after the Constitutional Court ruled against the CPS contract extension.”
That five-year window, extended by an additional year due to implementation delays, has now closed, necessitating the current transition.
For officials like Thandi Luthuli, a regional SASSA coordinator I interviewed at the Mthatha office, the expiration represents both a challenge and an opportunity.
“Yes, there are growing pains,” she acknowledges as she surveys the waiting room already filling with grant recipients seeking assistance.
“But this transition allows us to implement a more secure, flexible system that can better serve beneficiaries in the long term.”
Those long-term benefits, however, feel distant to many recipients currently navigating payment disruptions, confusion over new cards, and accessibility barriers.
The Human Cost of Transition
For Nomsa and millions like her, the gold card expiration isn’t just an administrative change – it’s a potentially life-threatening disruption to their financial lifeline.
Social grants provide essential income to approximately 18.6 million South Africans, including older persons, people with disabilities, and children from vulnerable households.
In many cases, a single grant supports extended families in a country where unemployment hovers around 33%.
“My pension feeds five people,” Nomsa explains, counting on her fingers.
“My two grandchildren, my daughter who lost her job during COVID, and my sister’s boy who came to live with us after she passed.”
When her payment didn’t arrive last month due to card issues, the entire household went without electricity for ten days, and they had to borrow money from neighbors to buy basic food staples.
This scenario has played out across South Africa as the payment system transition encounters inevitable technical and logistical hurdles.
Reports from urban townships to remote rural villages tell of similar struggles: elderly recipients confused by the new requirements, people with disabilities unable to access distant enrollment centers, and families facing temporary destitution while awaiting new payment methods.
“We anticipated challenges,” admits Mandla Zulu, a SASSA spokesman I interviewed by phone.
“But the scale of the transition – nearly 12 million active cards being replaced – means even a small percentage of problems affects hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people.”
Critical observers point to insufficient planning, inadequate communication, and the inherent difficulties of implementing complex technological systems in a country with extreme inequality and infrastructure disparities.
The New System: Promises and Reality
The replacement for the gold card isn’t a single solution but rather a menu of options designed to give recipients more choices about how they receive their grants.
The primary replacement is the new SASSA/Postbank blue card, which functions as a basic bank account with improved security features.
Recipients can also choose to have their grants deposited directly into accounts at any commercial bank of their choice, a notable departure from the previous system’s limitations.
“This flexibility represents significant progress,” explains financial inclusion expert Nolwazi Mtshali from the University of the Witwatersrand.
“Recipients are no longer captive to a single payment provider, which should improve service quality through competition and reduce the well-documented exploitation that occurred at dedicated payment points.”
The new system also introduces enhanced biometric verification requirements, which SASSA officials say will reduce fraud but which critics argue creates additional barriers for the most vulnerable.
At the Mthatha office, I observe the frustration of 84-year-old Zolile Matanzima, whose fingerprints are too worn from decades of agricultural labor to register properly on the biometric scanner.
“They say I must come back with my daughter to verify my identity,” he explains, visibly exhausted after sitting for three hours.
“But she works in Gqeberha and cannot take time off or she will lose her job.”
His situation illustrates the gap between the system’s design and the realities of beneficiaries’ lives – a gap that SASSA officials acknowledge but have struggled to bridge effectively during the transition period.
Urban vs. Rural Experiences
The gold card transition has highlighted South Africa’s persistent spatial inequalities, with urban recipients generally finding the process more manageable than their rural counterparts.
In Johannesburg’s Alexandra township, I visit a temporary SASSA enrollment center set up in a community hall, where the process appears relatively streamlined despite long queues.
Recipients can complete their card exchange and biometric registration in one visit, with a manageable average wait time of 3-4 hours.
But 800 kilometers away in the rural Eastern Cape, recipients like Nomvula Radebe face a drastically different experience.
“I traveled 67 kilometers to reach this office,” she tells me, having spent R180 on transportation – nearly 8% of her monthly disability grant.
“When I arrived, they said their system was offline and I should come back next week.”
For rural beneficiaries, such journeys often involve significant financial cost, physical hardship, and time away from family responsibilities – burdens that may need to be repeated multiple times before successfully completing the transition.
This urban-rural disparity extends to the functionality of the new payment options themselves.
While urban recipients benefit from numerous ATMs, retail points, and bank branches where they can access their grants, rural areas often have limited infrastructure.
In some remote villages, recipients must travel to distant towns to withdraw their money, sometimes spending significant portions of their grants on transportation.
“The designers of the system seem to imagine that everyone lives in Sandton,” remarks community activist Thembinkosi Ngwenya, who helps elderly recipients in rural KwaZulu-Natal navigate the transition.
“They don’t consider what happens when there’s no electricity for days, no network coverage, and the nearest ATM is 40 kilometers away.”
The Digital Divide and Financial Inclusion
Beyond geographic disparities, the gold card transition has exposed South Africa’s profound digital divide.
The new system heavily emphasizes digital banking features, including a mobile app, USSD services, and electronic payments – tools that promise greater convenience but remain inaccessible to many grant recipients.
“Only about 42% of South Africans over 60 own smartphones,” notes digital inclusion researcher Dr. Mpho Lehong.
“Yet the new system assumes digital literacy and access that simply doesn’t exist among many grant recipients, particularly older persons and those in poor communities.”
At the Mthatha SASSA office, I observe a young volunteer patiently showing 78-year-old Nolufefe Dangala how to check her balance using a USSD code.
The lesson takes nearly 20 minutes, and Nolufefe’s hands shake with anxiety as she attempts to memorize the sequence.
“I never went past Standard 3 in school,” she tells me afterward.
“These numbers and codes confuse me, and I’m afraid of making mistakes with my money.”
Her fear isn’t unfounded.
Social grant fraud has evolved alongside payment technologies, with recipients increasingly targeted by sophisticated scams.
Reports of beneficiaries receiving calls from fraudsters claiming to “help” with the card transition have surged in recent months, with many vulnerable recipients losing entire grant payments to such schemes.
SASSA has responded with education campaigns warning recipients never to share PINs or respond to requests for personal information, but the effectiveness of these initiatives varies widely across different communities.
Innovation Amidst Challenges
Despite the difficulties, the gold card transition has also sparked remarkable innovation and community solidarity.
In the Eastern Cape, local nonprofit Masibambane has developed a “digital buddies” program, pairing tech-savvy youth volunteers with elderly recipients to help them navigate the new system.
“The young people get community service experience for their CVs, and the elders get genuine assistance from someone they can trust,” explains program founder Sibusiso Makana.
“It creates intergenerational connections while addressing a practical need.”
In other communities, church groups and stokvels (community savings clubs) have organized collective transportation to SASSA offices, reducing individual costs and providing mutual support during the often-intimidating transition process.
Even some local businesses have stepped up, with spaza shop owners in several townships offering free transportation to SASSA offices for elderly customers or helping them complete verification processes online.
“These grassroots responses reveal South Africans’ resilience and community-mindedness,” observes social anthropologist Dr. Lungi Mabuza.
“But they also highlight the gaps in official implementation – communities are essentially creating shadow support systems to compensate for institutional shortcomings.”
Postbank’s Growing Pains
Central to the card transition is Postbank, the banking division of the South African Post Office that has taken on the enormous responsibility of providing financial services to millions of grant recipients.
The institution has faced significant challenges during the transition, including system outages, capacity limitations, and security concerns.
In November 2024, just as the card transition was accelerating, Postbank experienced a major cybersecurity incident that temporarily affected access to approximately 1.5 million accounts, creating additional anxiety among recipients already nervous about the change.
“Postbank was given a mandate that its institutional capacity wasn’t fully prepared for,” argues banking sector analyst Pravin Naidoo.
“They’re essentially building the plane while flying it, which is risky when you’re responsible for the financial lifeline of the nation’s most vulnerable citizens.”
At a Postbank branch in East London, I witness the pressure first-hand as overwhelmed staff attempt to assist a constant stream of recipients with card issues, account queries, and transition problems.
“We’re doing our best with the resources we have,” says branch manager Ayanda Mazibuko, visibly exhausted after a 12-hour shift.
“Our staff care deeply about helping our clients, but we need more support and better systems from head office.”
Despite these challenges, Postbank officials maintain that the institution is steadily improving its capacity and that most recipients have successfully transitioned to the new system.
“Over 85% of former gold card holders have been migrated to alternative payment methods,” states Postbank CEO Lungisa Fuzile in a press statement released last week.
“We continue to enhance our systems daily while prioritizing uninterrupted grant payments.”
Policy Implications and Future Directions
The gold card transition represents more than just a technical change – it embodies broader questions about how modern welfare states serve their most vulnerable citizens in a digital age.
For policy analysts like Thandeka Nkosi from the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, the transition highlights the tension between modernization and accessibility.
“Digital payment systems offer significant advantages in terms of efficiency and reduced corruption,” she notes.
“But their implementation must account for the lived realities of beneficiaries, not just technical or commercial considerations.”
The challenges of the transition have prompted calls for a more gradual, hybrid approach to welfare payment modernization – one that maintains accessible analog options while incrementally introducing digital alternatives.
Some advocate for a “dignity-centered design” approach that would involve recipients more meaningfully in system planning rather than imposing solutions from above.
“The people who actually use these systems – elderly pensioners, people with disabilities, caregivers in remote areas – have valuable insights that could prevent many of the problems we’re seeing,” argues social justice advocate Reverend Mthuthuzeli Sibeko.
“But they’re rarely consulted in any meaningful way.”
Looking Forward: Lessons Being Learned
As the transition continues, SASSA and Postbank officials insist they are learning from the initial challenges and making real-time adjustments to improve the process.
Recent changes include extended operating hours at high-volume offices, mobile enrollment teams dispatched to remote areas, and simplified verification procedures for recipients with documented biometric registration difficulties.
“We acknowledge the hardships some beneficiaries have experienced and are working tirelessly to address them,” SASSA CEO Busisiwe Memela-Khambula stated in a recent briefing.
“Our commitment to ensuring every eligible recipient receives their grant remains unwavering.”
For recipients like Nomsa Mbatha, who finally received her new blue card after her third visit to the SASSA office, these improvements offer hope but come after significant stress and hardship.
“I’m relieved to have my card now, but it shouldn’t have been so difficult,” she says, carefully placing the new card in a small cloth pouch she’ll guard with her life.
“We elders built this country with our hands.
A little more respect for our time and dignity would be welcome.”
As South Africa continues this massive transition, her words serve as both a critique and an aspiration – a reminder that behind every policy change, system upgrade, and administrative process are real human lives dependent on their success.
The gold card may be history, but the lessons from its replacement should inform how social protection systems evolve in South Africa and beyond, ensuring that technological progress genuinely serves human needs rather than creating new barriers for the already vulnerable.
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