Abused and removed from his family by the courts when he was just a toddler, a 13-year-old boy who is passionate about rugby and landed a spot in the prestigious Craven Week next month has been told his dream has been put on hold.
He is among the 166 children who live at the Jacaranda Children’s Home in East Lynne, Pretoria. It’s a landing place for children who have been removed from their homes because of extreme abuse or neglect.
And while the home is comfortable, clean and well run, the cheeriness and safety the youngsters normally feel has been replaced by uncertainty and fear, as the home has not received its much-needed government funding since March.
With almost R2m in funding outstanding, normal living has been reduced to just surviving. “We’re running on fumes,” said Charlene Grobler, CEO of Jacaranda and Louis Botha Children’s Home in Queenswood, where they house a further 89 boys and girls aged six to 18 years.
The situation is urgent. Organisations are collapsing. These NGOs have been running on reduced budgets while government employees get their regular pay and increases
— Lisa Vetten, Gauteng Care Crisis Committee chairperson
“We’ve taken out loans and have managed to pay water, electricity, salaries, school costs and food. Toiletries and cleaning supplies have been cut and we’re reaching the end. There are always problems with government funding, and we’re used to making a plan and getting by. But this is the worst I’ve seen in the 20 years I’ve been here.”
The situation is equally dire at Epilepsy South Africa, where the residential facility that is home to 125 patients — many frail — is waiting for its grant payment, about R1,6m, for the first quarter of the financial year in April. “Our medical staff have not been paid for three months but are still working. They have been turning to family and making other plans,” said Aileen Langley, director of Epilepsy SA.
“Our local community has been donating food, so our patients have been fed, though some have to follow a specific diet.”
The Gauteng Care Crisis Committee (GCCC), a centralised coalition of NGOs fighting to get their government grants, estimates that as of the end of May about 40 essential service providers had yet to be paid for the first quarter of the financial year, with just 11 of these showing 2,834 directly affected people at risk.
The Gauteng department of social development has cited various reasons for the hold up in payments, but told the Sunday Times this week that payments would be finalised "within days".
The department policy requires each funded organisation to have a service level agreement (SLA) with the department — a contract laying out the services they will provide to how many people over what period for a set monthly amount.
The SLAs are completed annually and should be in place by March 31. Bureaucratic barriers and administrative delays led to a funding crisis in May 2023, when Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi was forced to reverse mass budget cuts and was compelled to ensure payments were restored by the end of May that year.
Then in 2024, Lesufi was again called to intervene over late payments after the GCCC secured a court order that saw funding initiated in June.
This year, most of the unpaid organisations are child and youth care centres in Tshwane, but include two disability care facilities for 200 people, a homeless shelter for 57 people and an assisted-living facility for 11 paraplegics.
The Sunday Times visited Jacaranda this week.
“The government grants cover about 40% of our costs and we rely on donors and the community to pay for things like school photos, veld school and the matric dance,” Grobler said, tearing up as she related her sadness at having to tell 18 teenagers they cannot go to veld school this year.
“It’s things like veld school, a matric dance, school photos — that can easily be laughed off as extras you can do without. But they are part of normal life. Now the 18 that have had to pull out of veld school will become known as ‘those kids from the children’s home’. It’s the label we don’t want for any of them.”
Grobler said she did not have the heart to tell the young rugby player that he couldn't go to Craven Week, and said she had promised him that somehow they would make a plan to get the R5 000 needed.
But she said that, from July, unpaid services will be stopped and no staff will be paid.
Even if the department found the money, it would not be paid to the home as their SLA was not in place. This is despite the fact that the home is audited four times a year and submitted its documents in March, well before the deadline.
Compounding the issue is a three-month backlog in obtaining J738 clearance certificates for every staff member — a new requirement of the Tshwane DSD. The certificate is confirmation that the staff member is not listed on the National Register for Sex Offenders — “which is a fair request and something we are happy about”, said Grobler.
The certificate is produced by the justice and constitutional development department. “We submitted all our applications to the department on March 3.
Jacaranda has received some clearances, but not all. “We can’t understand why there’s such a hold up.”
However, the Sunday Times has seen an internal memo from Gauteng social development HIV and Aids and EPWP (expanded public works programme) director Tsakani Maluleke to acting department head Bongani Ngomane, dated April 14, in which it is acknowledged that there is a three-month backlog for clearance certificates, and recommending that condonation for this new requirement be granted to NGOs until the end of June. The recommendation was approved by Ngomane.
On Monday, Langley gave an interview on Epilepsy SA’s plight to a television news station and returned to her office to find that Gauteng DSD had delivered its SLA. She immediately had it signed by the board and submitted for payment and is hopeful they will get their money in the next few days.
“A lot or our residents are very frail, and if things get worse they won’t survive much longer.”
Gauteng social development spokesperson Motsamai Motlhaolwa said all the approved NGOs had been given their award letters on March 31 and would be paid "assuming they have signed SLAs in place with no compliance issues".
He said payments were still being processed, and although R300m had been paid to date, 111 payments remained outstanding on June 5.
The reasons for the late payment, he said, were linked to the late signing of SLAs and "problems with central supplier database registration" which also delayed payments.
Motsamai said other reasons included NGOs having to comply with NSOR clearances; NGOs refusing to sign their SLAs due to budget cuts; NGOs failing to comply with municipal bylaws and a general delay in the returning of signed SLAs "to the point that we even issued warning letter that if SLAs are not returned, funding will be forfeited".
He said they were in the process of finalising the last few SLAs and payments would follow within days.
GCCC chairperson Lisa Vetten said: “The situation is urgent. Organisations are collapsing. These NGOs have been running on reduced budgets while government employees get their regular pay and increases.”
Vetten said it was “extremely disheartening” that after Lesufi had managed to obtain an extra R200m last year to cover budget shortfalls, the department this year returned R102m to Treasury for underspending on HIV programmes, school uniforms and dignity packs.
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