A few days ago, we published a story about Jeanette Kidiemetse Moses. A woman in her late 40s from Gauteng, caring for more than six dependants on part-time work and a SASSA Child Support Grant that runs out before month end.
The story – titled SASSA grant recipient travels 20km to collect support for six dependants – generated 183 comments on Facebook.
Most of them suggested she try birth control.
Nobody read the article
The very first commenter got 42 likes for “It’s called birth control.” It set the tone for everything that followed.
The suggestions escalated quickly. Family planning. Vasectomy. Sterilisation. A Durex picture. Someone invoked China’s one-child policy. Another commenter suggested Africa needs a one-child policy outright. A third said the grant should stop at one child. A fourth said taxpayers simply cannot keep up with the demands of people who do not pay tax.
Then came the kicker. Katherine Harvey wrote: “6 free abortions is cheaper than 6 kids from multiple dads.”
Twenty-seven likes.
It took a commenter named Liz Rudy to eventually say what the article had stated clearly from the start.
“Did anyone read the article? Its not her kids. She is a caregiver. Where would those kids be without her? In an orphanage or on the streets?”
Four likes.
Let that land for a moment.
What the SASSA article actually said
Jeanette wakes before dawn each month. She travels more than 20 kilometres to her nearest SASSA office or Postbank branch. The transport costs eat into the grant before she even gets home. The money goes on food. It runs out before the month ends.
She is not a reckless mother of six. She is a woman who stepped up for children who needed someone to step up. A caregiver. The kind of person most societies would quietly celebrate.
Instead, South Africa’s comment section put her on trial.
This is bigger than one article
We are not naive about the frustrations behind those comments. South Africans are rightly angry about grant dependency. About a government that has built a welfare state without a credible plan to grow its way out of one. About a tax base that shrinks while the demand on it grows. About a system that too often rewards inaction and punishes effort.
Those are real conversations. Important ones. But they are not Jeanette’s story.
What happened in that comment section is something we see constantly now. Someone shares a headline. The headline triggers a feeling. The feeling produces a verdict. The article itself never gets read. The person at the centre of it never gets seen.
Jeanette’s story was never really about SASSA. It was about a person absorbing responsibility for vulnerable children in a country where the safety net has more holes than fabric. Where the people quietly holding things together rarely get acknowledged, and occasionally get publicly shamed for it.
That deserves at least a moment’s pause before reaching for the keyboard.
We can do better than this
The comment that got 67 likes said the grant should stop at one child. The comment that defended Jeanette got four.
That gap tells us something uncomfortable about ourselves. About the speed at which we judge. About how much easier it is to be outraged than informed. About what we choose to reward with our attention.
The real question is not why Jeanette has six dependants. It is why so few of us stopped to find that out before we told her what she should have done differently.
