[JURIST] The Constitutional Court of South Africa [official website] on Friday enforced [judgment, PDF; press release] a contract between the South African Social Services Agency (SASSA) [official website] and Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) [corporate website] to ensure that beneficiaries will still receive welfare. CPS and SASSA entered into a contract in 2012 wherein CPS agreed to pay social grants for SASSA. This contract was declared invalid by the court at that time and suspended. In 2015 SASSA said that it would take over payments when the suspension ended on April 1, 2017. However, it became clear that SASSA would not be able to make payments. The case decided Friday was brought by the Black Sash [advocacy website], a non-profit that protects the beneficiaries of social grants. The court ruled that the government is constitutionally obligated to provide welfare for its citizens. The court reversed the suspension of the contract until April 1, 2018, when SASSA should be able to make the payments itself. Judge Johan Froneman wrote [Bloomberg report], “[t]his court and the whole country are now confronted with a situation where the executive arm of government admits that it is not able to fulfill its constitutional and statutory obligations to provide for the social assistance of its people,” criticizing South African President Jacob Zuma’s [BBC profile] administration.

This is not the first time Zuma has faced criticism. Last April Zuma survived [JURIST report] an impeachment vote. Zuma was ousted [JURIST report] as the country’s deputy president in 2005 after an aide was convicted of corruption. He was also charged with rape, but he was ultimately acquitted and reinstated [JURIST report] as African National Congress deputy vice president in 2006. He was first charged with corruption in 2005, but those charges were later dismissed [JURIST report] because prosecutors failed to follow proper procedures.