Caregivers fight to make ends meet on below-food-poverty-line Child Support Grant - Daily Maverick

South Africa’s R580 Child Support Grant falls far short of the R868 food poverty line, leaving parents and caregivers with little or no work trapped in debt and hunger as rising electricity and food costs erode household stability.

Imagine being the mother of a young child, struggling to find work while relying on the R580 Child Support Grant to meet the needs of a growing person.

With the national food poverty line sitting at R868, your monthly allocation is already 33% below what is needed to meet the basic caloric intake to avoid starvation. Once you have set aside money for other essentials like electricity and transport, your means for putting food on the table has eroded even further.

Visits to the homes of grant beneficiaries in the Western Cape, Gauteng, Free State, North West and Limpopo showed Daily Maverick the desperation experienced by caregivers trying to meet the needs of families while receiving social grants set below the food poverty line. Many had been frustrated in their efforts to find work, while others relied on intermittent employment that could be lost with little notice.

In some households, grandparents receiving the Older Person’s Grant of R2,400 per month were using a portion of the money to support their grandchildren, trying to bridge the gap created by an insufficient Child Support Grant and rampant unemployment.

In September 2026, the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group (PMBEJD) organisation’s Household Affordability Index, designed together with women living on low incomes across the country, put the average cost of a household food basket at R5,488.06, with a year-on-year increase of R108.64 (2%).

The Child Support Grant increased by R20 in April 2026, from R560 to R580.

The food poverty line is the bare minimum amount of money for one individual to buy enough food for survival, and then the PMBEJD’s amount is “the foods and the volume of these foods which women living in a family of seven members (an average low-income household size) tell us they typically try and secure each month”.

Christal Adonis, a mother of three living in Bishop Lavis, Cape Town, receives Child Support Grants for her two older children. She has yet to secure a grant for her youngest of three children, who is four months old.

Among her biggest expenses are electricity and food. She estimated she spent about R400 on electricity each month, adding that the cost of keeping the lights on had been increasing.

“It’s affecting me badly because now, I’m struggling to keep up,” she told Daily Maverick.

In order to make it through the month, Adonis will sometimes get items like bread on credit at the local tuckshop, and pay them off once the next month’s grant money comes in. However, this traps her in a vicious cycle of debt.

“[The grant] should be more because the cost of living is very high, and the prices go up all the time. It’s always the electricity and food that... goes up. It is expensive because you do get the grant, but then... it doesn’t even last a week. Only a day, because of different costs and people you owe that you have to pay,” she explained.

The school fees for her 17-year-old child are R850 a month – a reduced rate offered to parents relying on grants.

“But still, I can’t even afford to pay that,” said Adonis.

Naomi Dlamini, a resident of Thokoza in Ekurhuleni, Gauteng, said that she uses part of her Older Person’s Grant each month to assist with care for her three grandchildren, including one who has been diagnosed with autism. Only one of her adult children is working.

“Most grandmothers... are looking out for their children,” she said.

She added that she spent about R1,500 on food in the days after receiving her grant money, buying in bulk to last through as much of the month as possible.

“Food is very difficult because I buy [mielie meal], but at 16 to 17 [days into the month], it’s finished. I buy sugar, flour, but 15 to 16 [days later], finished. As I talk now, it's finished,” said Dlamini.

“The food that must be given to children is very expensive.”

The value of the Child Support Grant has eroded since it was first introduced in 1998 due to a failure to provide inflationary increases every year, according to Kelle Howson, senior researcher and project lead for social security at the Institute for Economic Justice. She noted that though an effort had been made to provide inflationary increases in recent years, the grant remained well below what was needed to provide nutritious meals to a child.

“The food poverty line isn’t the best metric for the level of support that the state should be giving to children. The cost of feeding a child a basic nutritious diet is quite significantly above the food poverty line,” noted Howson.

“The number one argument for ensuring that the Child Support Grant is at an adequate level is, of course, based on rights and a moral imperative, but there is also very much an economic argument for eliminating child stunting and malnutrition.”

The Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group Household Affordability Index puts the monthly cost of a basic nutritious diet for a child at R970,27.

Mervyn Abrahams, programme coordinator at PMBEJD, noted that to understand the affordability of food, it was necessary to look not only at the year-on-year increase in the cost of the household food basket, but also the relationship between the amount of income a person received and the cost of the goods or services they intended to purchase.

In September 2026, a worker earning the national minimum wage of R30,23 an hour for 21 working days would receive R5,078.64, less than the average cost of a household food basket, according to the PMBEJD. For those without work relying entirely on social grants, access to food becomes even more difficult.

“Your national minimum wage is a wage that maintains you in poverty... For the majority of South Africa’s workers who earn at the level of the national minimum wage, it’s as bleak as for people on social grants. The only difference is that working gives you a sense of dignity, and of course, people want to work rather than just being dependent on social grants,” said Abrahams.

Women have reported to the PMBEJD that the expenses they prioritise when money comes into the household are transport, taking up about 40% of the national minimum wage, and electricity, taking up about 26%. Another key expense each month, which is more difficult for the organisation to track, is debt servicing due to loans or purchasing items on credit.

“No matter what the [food] prices are, these other [expenses] would impact how much money you have left in your budget in order to purchase food,” said Abrahams.

Daily Maverick reached out to the Department of Social Development about the Child Support Grant, but had not received a response at the time of publishing.

The Department of Social Development is responsible for determining the direction of social development policy, while the National Treasury’s role is to work with departments on the affordability and sustainability of government spending within the broader fiscal framework.

“In determining annual adjustments to social grants, including the child support grant (CSG), the National Treasury considers the overall fiscal framework, including projected revenue, competing funding priorities across government, borrowing requirements and the need to maintain fiscal sustainability.

“Within this context, the CSG increase for 2026/27 was broadly aligned with the projected [Consumer Price Index] estimate, reflecting the constraints of the prevailing fiscal environment and the need to balance multiple government priorities,” said the National Treasury.

It told Daily Maverick that it recognised the importance of children’s constitutional rights, including the right to basic nutrition, and supported a range of government programmes such as the Child Support Grant, the National School Nutrition Programme and early childhood development projects.

“Efforts to improve the efficiency of the social assistance system, including strengthened verification processes and fraud prevention measures may create fiscal space through savings within the social grant system. As part of future budget processes, any resources generated from these measures could be considered, alongside other available funding options, to strengthen social assistance interventions aimed at addressing child hunger, malnutrition and broader child welfare outcomes.” DM