South Africa’s military veterans were promised dignity, stability, and financial relief through the Military Veterans Pension. Instead, thousands remain trapped in poverty and uncertainty as the Department of Military Veterans (DMV) and the Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA) preside over one of the most dysfunctional benefit rollouts in post-apartheid history, according to the Amalgamated Veterans of South Africa (AVSA).
Ernest Lintnaar, CEO of AVSA, said what was meant to uplift veterans has become a crisis of unlawful deductions, lost files, contradictory instructions, and administrative paralysis. He believes one of the most alarming developments is the continued practice of reducing the Military Veterans Pension by offsetting it against South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) social grants.
Veterans report being instructed to cancel their SASSA grant before receiving their military pension; automatic clawbacks reducing the net pension to nearly nothing; and conflicting explanations from officials, none supported by legislation.
“This is illegal. The Military Veterans Act does not authorise the Military Veteran’s Pension to replace social security; it is intended to support veterans, not penalise them for being poor,” Lintnaar said. “It is important to emphasise that SASSA grants and the military veteran’s pension are entirely separate entitlements. SASSA provides government social assistance grants based on socioeconomic criteria, whereas the military veteran’s pension is a statutory entitlement for individuals who served in operational duties, many of whom were conscripted and had no choice. The military veteran’s pension is awarded solely on military service eligibility and should never be linked, offset, or confused with SASSA grants.”
“The current practice of offsetting the military veteran’s pension against SASSA grants appears to be a devious manipulation of policy, and AVSA rejects it outright,” Lintnaar continued.
He also singles out the GPAA for being a “bottleneck of administrative failure.” Veterans describe repeated requests for the same documents (Z894, ID copies, bank confirmations); processing delays stretching over many months; the inability to obtain updates or escalation; and applications sent “back for review” with no explanation.
The DMV’s database, the legal basis for determining eligibility “remains corrupted and incomplete,” according to Lintnaar, with veterans experiencing duplicate or missing profiles; incorrect service or force numbers; requests to re-submit documents already provided; and files stuck in “verification” indefinitely. “Without an accurate and functional register, the pension system will continue to fail,” he said.
Homelessness, food insecurity, desperation
“Veterans are being evicted daily while waiting for a pension that Parliament approved and funded nearly two years ago, housing. Families are sinking into debt. Children are going hungry. There is no coordinated national safety net for veterans awaiting their military veteran’s pension. Provinces, municipalities, SASSA, and DMV do not communicate,” according to Lintnaar. “Behind every delayed file is a household living in crisis.”
AVSA is calling for urgent intervention, including the immediate suspension of all SASSA deductions or offsets applied to the military veteran’s pension; a full Parliamentary Inquiry into the pension rollout; creation of an interdepartmental task team involving DMV, GPAA, SASSA, Defence, Home Affairs, and Treasury; emergency relief mechanisms for veterans facing eviction or homelessness; and a public, auditable dashboard showing all pension applications, processing stages, approvals, and payouts.
GPAA admits non-payment
In September 2025, a senior GPAA official, Sandy Thompson, confirmed directly to a veteran that the agency could not process payments because the DMV had failed to transfer funds, AVSA reported. Her statement, according to the association, reads: “Your file is in the payment process, we are waiting for the DMV to pay over money to GPAA so we are able to pay the military veteran’s pension. I seriously don’t think it will be this year.”
This admission exposes two critical failures: that the GPAA cannot fulfil its legal mandate without DMV funding transfers; and veterans were misled for months into believing that delays were “administrative,” when the real issue was insolvency of the military veterans pension budget, AVSA said.
In November 2025, Deon Smuts, the Deputy Director for the Military Veterans Pension at the DMV issued a written notice confirming total depletion of the pension budget: “Kindly note that the budget for pension is depleted for this financial year. No applications for pension are currently approved due to this. The media statement dating from July this year the public was informed of the status regarding funds. Please note that the revised Pension Regulations should be signed off in the near future, which will narrow down on recipients. This promises to have a huge influence regarding numbers of veterans receiving benefits.”
“This is the most significant public admission yet that the military veteran’s pension programme has collapsed financially and structurally,” Lintnaar said.
AVSA said it is deeply alarmed by indications from DMV officials, including Smuts, that the forthcoming revised Military Veterans Pension Regulations will adopt a “deserving military veteran” approach. These would apparently exclude veterans under the age of 60; claw back payments already made to lawful beneficiaries; and reduce the income threshold to R100 000 (down from R125 000 set in 2012).
“The military veteran’s pension must remain aligned to the purpose of the Act: to support all qualifying military veterans, not a reduced, hand-picked subset. Any regulation that contradicts the Act will be challenged, publicly and legally, on behalf of the veterans of South Africa,” AVSA concluded.
