Reinstated grant under threat

By Adrienne Carlisle

GRAHAMSTOWN -- Disabled Molteno resident Ngayithini Bushula, 52, is again facing the cancellation of his disability grant some 18 months after the high court here ordered the Welfare Department to reinstate it, after it was unprocedurally cancelled in 1997.

Bushula's high court victory in December 1999, led directly to the current high court class action brought by the Legal Resources Centre here against the department.

The centre is now asking the court to order the department to reinstate tens of thousands of other disability grants it cancelled at about the same time and in the same manner as Bushula's.

In December 1999, Justice Jimmy van Rensburg ruled as unprocedural and invalid the process department officials admitted they had followed to assess Bushula and thousands of other disabled people during the 1996 disability grant review.

For Bushula, the judgment meant that his permanent disability grant was immediately reinstated and he received roughly R15000 in backpay.

For the thousands of other people whose grants were similarly cancelled, it opened the door for the so-called "class action" currently being run in the high court here against the department.

If the action is successful, it will mean the department may have to reinstate, with backpay, the disability grants of every single person whose grant was cancelled between March 1996 and last July.

In the meantime, the department has again informed Bushula his grant is about to lapse.

In a recent letter to Bushula, the Queenstown welfare office informed him his disability grant was reinstated for a "period of one-year only" and he would receive his last payment in July.

An Legal Resources Centre spokesman yesterday said this was "absolute nonsense".

"Mr Bushula had a permanent disability grant before it was cancelled in 1997," he said.

''The high court ordered it be reinstated. The department cannot unilaterally reclassify it as a temporary disability grant."

For the grant to be cancelled would require a proper hearing and reasons given for the cancellation, he said.

"I can't understand why the department is doing this again."

However, Welfare Department spokesperson Gcobani Maswana was adamant the grant was a temporary one.

"All we are requesting by that letter is a review. By doing so we regularly check the status of our beneficiaries.

"If his case is authentic then we won't decline him his constitutional right to a grant."