'Today wasn’t her turn to take lunch to school': Is the current Child Support Grant enough to sustain a child?

A 10-year-old grade 4 student lay on the sick bed after passing out in the classroom.

“What did you eat today?” asked the staff member assisting the child, who suffers from diabetes.

“Nothing. Today wasn’t her turn to take lunch to school,” her sister chipped in, as she sat by her side. With multiple siblings, all living with their grandmother, there simply isn’t enough money to send them all to school with lunch each day, so they are forced to take turns.

Beryl*, who works in the administration department at a school in the Athlone area in Cape Town, told IOL that she has dealt with many cases like this, where children come to school hungry.

“Children often complain about tummy aches when they're in the sick bay. We ask them what they ate and it turns out they didn’t have anything the night before or in the morning,” Beryl said.

“We literally see things like this on a daily basis.”

Most of these children come from families that rely on child support grants, Beryl added. Many of them live with grandparents, as their parents are absent from their lives, often due to drug addiction.

The South African Child Support Grant (CSG) has been widely praised for its effectiveness in reaching large numbers of children from poor communities. It is available to the primary care-giver of the child, whether they are a parent, grandparent or anyone providing for their basic needs.

From April 2024, the Child Support Grant in South Africa was raised to R530, an increase of R20 from the previous year.

But is that sufficient to sustain a child?

In a review conducted in 2023 for the Department of Social Development by the Children’s Institute at the University of Cape Town, the Child Support Grant was found to have the best pro-poor targeting record of all existing social grants.

However the report found that the CSG’s biggest weakness was that its value (R500 at the time) was too small to protect the poorest children from hunger, malnutrition and stunting.

The grant is received by the parents and caregivers of over 13 million South African children each month, and yet more than seven million youngsters remain below the food poverty line, which is currently R796. It is believed that around 37% of all children in South Africa live below this poverty line.

A sobering fact, revealed by the Children’s Institute, is that 27% of all children are stunted, something which directly affects their ability to learn in school and hold down employment as adults.

Calls for a maternity grant

The nutritional welfare of unborn children is also of grave concern, and for that reason a coalition of NGOs and researchers has called upon government to implement a Maternal Support Grant (MSG) for pregnant women whose nutrition, and that of their unborn children, are at risk.

“Implementing the MSG is not an act of charity, but rather an act of justice. Pregnancy is a time of increased vulnerability and huge potential, but our society provides inadequate support for pregnant women who experience greater physical, mental and societal vulnerability,” said Julie Mentor, Project Lead of Embrace.

The lobby group also argues that the MSG could save the country around R13.8 billion per year by reducing the healthcare costs associated with birth complications, which require neonatal intensive care.

The grant, which has yet to be drafted by Cabinet, would cost the Treasury between R1.89 billion and R3.26 billion per year, depending on the number of pregnancy months it applies to.

Either way, vulnerable women continue to suffer the burden of pregnancy and childcare costs in the face of rising inflation.

Parents just struggling to survive

A young Child Support Grant recipient called Thandeka* spoke to IOL about the struggles involved in balancing the needs of her current five-year-old daughter and her pregnancy.

“It’s stressing me out a lot,” she said at the thought of paying over R600 per month for baby formula when the newborn arrives. Ideally she would like to stock up ahead of time, but this may not be possible.

Thandeka, who works at a takeaway deli in a Roodepoort suburb, says that although she appreciates the free education that her five-year old receives at a government school, she still has to pay R350 per month for her child’s transport to school

Food for the two of them currently costs her around R3,000 per month, and that is set to increase when her new son arrives. She can only buy clothing for her daughter every six months or so and that usually amounts to about R1,500.

Although there are free clinics available for the child’s healthcare, they don’t cover all essential needs. Thandeka said she was recently referred to a private facility for urgent dental care that her daughter needed.

Further east in the Johannesburg suburb of Westbury lives 18-year-old Eliza*, a Child Support Grant recipient who is mother to a two-year-old daughter.

She is fortunate enough to send her child to one of the better daycare centres in the area, as it is owned by her mother. Without her family ties this would have cost her R1,500 per month, while the cheapest government-subsidised daycare centres charge around R700. However, Eliza struggles with the daily expenses of feeding herself and her daughter, often relying on hand-me-down clothing and sometimes receives basic essentials like food and toiletries from charitable outreach projects as her parents, who she lives with, are battling to make ends meet themselves. 

Zama* from Mayville, Durban, who also spoke to IOL, is a bit more fortunate as she earns close to the maximum allowed in order to apply for a CSG, which is R5,300 per month, but she still struggles with healthcare costs as her daughter has asthma and there are no free clinics in her area, forcing her to rely on private doctor visits at R500 per session.

“The grant is not enough, it hardly helps at all,” said Zama, who believes a more appropriate amount would be R1,000.

While just making ends meet is enough of a struggle on its own, Zama often has to forgo things that she needs for herself. For instance, when her December bonus was paid, she did not buy clothes for herself, and also did not get her hair done as she usually does.

It is clear simply from these anecdotal examples that the current child support grant is insufficient to meet the basic needs of a child in South Africa.

Even before education and daycare become necessary, the basic costs of keeping a newborn alive and hygienic far outweigh the current CSG amount. 

Infants below the age of three months, for instance, are known to use between 220 and 330 diapers per month, on average, and 150 to 230 per month between three and six months.

Some mystery shopping at discount outlets such as Makro and Shoprite showed that prices of Size 2 diapers (for infants two to six months old) can vary from R1.76 to R2.78 per diaper, depending on the brand. Even at R2, which is at the affordable end of the scale, the parent of a newborn can easily spend R440 or more per month just on diapers, which is the bulk of the grant amount.

For hygiene reasons, and particularly in areas where water outages persist, even the poorest of parents whom we spoke to are reluctant to use non-disposable diapers.

An infant also requires at least 160ml of formula per kilogram of body weight per day. Parents can expect to pay at least R15 for a 110ml pouch when it’s on special, which quickly adds up.

Given the current cost of feeding a child, and the high rates of child poverty, and consequent malnutrition and stunting, the United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of the Child, among various other international committees, have all recommended that the Child Support Grant amount in South Africa be increased.

* Names were changed in order to protect the anonymity of the interviewees.

IOL