[kabouseng]

Ok I'm back. Just googling "South African grants misuse" will give you plenty of sources. I wont link the top results, but your more than welcome to look for yourself. The system is rife with corruption and abuse. Also of note is that about 2 - 3 million tax payers carry the burden of upwards of 12 million grant receivers. An unsustainable system collapsing under its own weight.

[nhaehnle]

+1 for actually coming back, even if not with exact links. I must say that I find it hard to get a good picture from the links in a simple Google search, and your numbers seem weird. South Africa has a population of 50+ million, how do you end up saying that there are only 2-3 million tax payers? That makes no sense, given that typically everybody pays taxes, directly or indirectly.

[kabouseng]

My apologies then. Here are the links I had a skim through:

http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2012/05/25/social-grants...

http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=4121

http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/young-moms-abuse-gran...

Please note the variance in the sources (even communist party :D ), so not really a biased picture. Everyone knows the grant system is being abused on a massive scale. Also the amount of people on the grant system exploded from 80 000 people receiving grants in 1998 until today's 12 000 000 people. And South Africa is not exactly a rich country...

As for my taxpayer statement, you only pay taxes if you earn above a certain amount. But it is a sliding scale system, so about 2 300 000 people are responsible for 93% of all the collected taxes, supporting 12 000 000 people. Not sustainable.

An in depth explanation: http://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-tax/less-taxpayers-than-s...