From Paymaster to Postmaster: How South African Biometric Social Assistance Payment Systems Move between Private and Public

• In Event: STS & Africa - II: Innovation and Mobilities

Abstract

In 2018, the South African government instituted a social assistance payment and registration system that it would administer through a public entity: the South African Post Office (SAPO). For the previous six years, from 2012, the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) contracted a private company, Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), to design a standardised national social assistance system. The company was awarded the contract based on its commitment to biometric enrolment and payment technologies. The final shift in 2018 from CPS to the SAPO has surfaced questions around the failures of privatisation and the challenges of state-run social services. This article engages with the messy practices of nationalising a technological system that had been monopolised by a private company and its subsidiaries. Privatising social services that mobilise advanced technological systems can leave the state beholden to entanglements with non-state actors. In the presentation, I discuss the reasons why the failure of large-scale biometric technologies to deliver on promises of efficiency and security seldom involves a re-evaluation of the technologies but rather of the actors who implement them.

Author

• Natasha Vally, Department of Sociology, University of Cape Town