Dimakatso Maloka did not sleep the night she found out she had won The South African’s SASSA survey competition.
She went to bed in tears, not from sadness, but from a disbelief so overwhelming it kept pulling her back to her inbox.
“I kept looking at the email, re-reading it just to see if you guys didn’t make any mistake,” she told The South African.
“I went to bed crying, happy, joyful, waking up to something that felt like a dream, and going back to open my email just to make sure I actually won.”
The R2 000 prize was not just money to Maloka. It was winter clothes for her daughter. There was breathing room in a household stretched dangerously thin between the SASSA Child Support Grant and the R370 Social Relief of Distress grant she receives as an unemployed mother.
“The moment it got into my account, I was jumping for joy,” she said.
“I had to go buy clothes for my daughter, for her to be warm this winter.”
SASSA cruel reward
But the joy did not last. When SASSA reviewed her account the following month, the R2 000 prize, a once-off deposit, was flagged as income. Her SRD grant was declined.
“Even this month, I didn’t get my R370 because of the two thousand rand that was in my account,” she said.
“It’s hectic. It’s really, really hectic. It’s nonsense.”
It is a bitter irony that many low-income South Africans know all too well, a windfall that helps in one hand and punishes in the other.
‘R20 increase a year is not helping’
Beyond her own experience, Maloka had a direct message for the government. Her daughter is no longer a baby.
The R500 SASSA Child Support Grant, she argued, has not kept pace with the reality of raising a child in 2026.
“She needs clothes, transportation to school, school fees, school events, and I can’t afford it,” Maloka said.
“The R20 increase every year is pointless. It’s not helping at all.”
She went further, pointing to a broader social tension. Women are being discouraged from having children not by choice, she said, but by economic desperation.
“They’re complaining that no girl wants to produce kids in this country. How can you fall pregnant when you know you will not be able to afford it? You don’t have a job.”
Maloka herself has been applying for work for years without success. Yet she refuses to let her circumstances define her daughter’s experience.
“I do not use the R370 for myself. I use it for my daughter, making sure she looks beautiful, and her hair is done. If she doesn’t need anything this month, I’ll put it away for her birthday.”
‘Stop being sceptical – just enter’
Her message to South Africans who scroll past competition entries without participating was simple and urgent.
“People must enter. They need to stop being sceptical,” she said.
“You don’t know when luck will come knocking at your door. Sometimes you could enter once and win. Answer the best way you can, and you may never know, one day, it will be you.”
Her family, she admitted, thought The South African was a scam when she first told them about the prize. Now she has made it her mission to change their minds.
“I was the first one to introduce them. I told them, you people must enter.”
Win R2 000 in the South African SASSA grant survey
If you receive a SASSA grant and want to share your story, we want to hear from you.
Take part in our survey and stand a chance to win R2 000. Your responses help us tell the stories that matter.
