Johannesburg – The General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA) says it has learned with “outrage, but not surprise,” of the treacherous decision to terminate the service agreement between the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) and Postbank.
“This decision is nothing less than a coordinated act of economic sabotage against a state-owned enterprise,” GIWUSA said on Friday, 29 August 2025.
The decision to dump the Postbank coincides with SASSA’s move to introduce biometric systems for beneficiaries in an effort to reduce fraud.
“It is a blatant programme of privatisation by stealth, designed to hand over millions of vulnerable South Africans to the very banking cartel that has rigged the financial system, imposed usurious service fees and interest rates, and manipulated the Rand for their own profiteering,”’ GIWUSA said.
“Whilst the reporting on this has been focused on the administrative, logistical and other secondary aspects, the workers movement should be absolutely clear:
“This is not a simple administrative change but a deliberate act of capitalist class warfare, designed to dismantle public assets and further subordinate the proletariat and the poor to the exploitative logic of finance capital.”
SASSA is introducing a new mandatory biometric enrolment system for all social grant beneficiaries, effective 1 September 2025, and has assured beneficiaries that services will not be disrupted.
SASSA says most grant beneficiaries receive their monthly payments through commercial banks rather than Postbank.
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