Editorial Policy

This policy explains how Grant Assist SA decides what to publish, how an article is researched and checked before it goes live, and who is responsible when something turns out to be wrong. It applies to every page on this website.

Two shorter documents sit alongside it. The fact-checking policy covers how we verify a factual claim. The corrections policy covers what happens after we publish a mistake.

Who we are, and what we are not

Grant Assist SA is an independent information website. We are not SASSA. We are not the Department of Social Development, and we have no connection to any government body.

Nobody here can see your application, change it, or affect a decision about it. We explain public information and point you to the official service. We do not process applications, and we never ask a reader for an ID number, a mobile number or banking details.

What we publish

We write explainers and guides about South African social grants: how an application works, what a requirement means, what a status message is telling you, and where the official service lives.

Subjects are chosen by looking at what readers are actually trying to work out. A subject makes the list if we can explain it accurately from public sources and the reader ends up better off than before they arrived.

We do not publish rumours about payment increases, unconfirmed announcements, or anything that reaches us as a forwarded message with no traceable origin. If we cannot find where a claim came from, that absence is usually the reason we leave it alone.

How we research an article

An article starts with the question a reader arrived with, written down in plain words. Everything after that is an attempt to answer it.

We work from primary sources wherever they exist: legislation, government notices, SASSA publications, court judgments and published statistics. Reporting by other publications is useful for finding those sources. It does not replace them.

Where something cannot be confirmed, we say so in the article. A gap described honestly is more useful to a reader than a plausible guess that fills it.

The sources we use

In rough order of preference:

• South African legislation and published government notices
• SASSA and Department of Social Development publications
• Court judgments and official records
• Statistics published by Statistics South Africa
• On-the-record statements by an organisation about itself
• Established news publications, used to locate a primary source

Social media posts, screenshots and forwarded messages are not sources. They are sometimes a reason to go looking for one.

Review before publication

Every article is reviewed before it publishes. The reviewer checks that:

• every factual claim can be traced back to a source
• the article answers the question in its own title
• nothing in it reads as advice about a particular reader’s situation
• every link to an official service goes where it says it goes
• no amount, threshold or date is presented as settled fact when it can change

Keeping articles current

Grant rules, qualifying amounts and payment dates change, sometimes with little warning. This is the part of the subject most likely to go stale, and the part a reader is most likely to act on.

So we avoid printing a specific rand amount or threshold as though it were permanent. We describe how something works and send you to SASSA for the current figure. Every article shows the date it was last updated, and we revisit a guide when a rule it describes changes.

Independence and commercial content

Editorial decisions are made on editorial grounds: whether a subject matters to our readers, whether we can report it accurately, and whether the reader ends up better informed.

If we run sponsored content, advertising or an affiliate link, it is labelled where you will actually see it rather than buried in a footer. No advertiser sees an article before publication, and none of them can approve, change or block one.

How we use AI tools

We use software to help draft and edit, and that includes AI writing tools. It does not change who is accountable for what appears here.

A person chooses the subject, checks each claim against a source, and approves the article before it publishes. We do not publish text that nobody has read and verified. An AI tool is never treated as a source, and nothing it asserts reaches an article without being confirmed somewhere real.

This is information, not advice

Nothing on this website is financial, legal or professional advice, and none of it is written with your circumstances in mind. We explain how a process works in general. What applies to you depends on facts we do not have.

For a decision about your own application, the authority is SASSA or the relevant government department, not us.

Who is responsible

Articles are published under the Grant Assist SA name unless a named author appears on the page. Editorial responsibility sits with the site’s editor, who can be reached through the contact page.

We do not publish invented author biographies, fabricated credentials or made-up staff profiles.

Reporting a problem with an article

If we published something wrong, tell us. Send the article, the specific claim you are disputing, and where the correct information can be checked.

Corrections are handled under our corrections policy. We would rather hear about a mistake than leave it standing.

Changes to this policy

We review this policy from time to time and update it when our practice changes. The date shown at the top of this page is when it last changed.