All 24 are victims of a crippling systemic appeals backlog in the office of Social Development Minister Edna Molewa and the tribunal she appointed to hear appeals.

Most applicants have waited 18 months or more in vain to hear the outcome of their appeals against the South African Social Security Agency's (Sassa) decision to reject their applications for DGs. In fact, two clients of the Legal Resources Centre in Grahamstown died months after lodging their appeals without ever finding out the outcome.

Legal Resources Centre regional director Sarah Sephton, who is acting for the Black Sash and the 24 disabled applicants, said in an affidavit that Florence Tuck and Josephine Roberts died in "abject poverty" while waiting for appeals to be processed.

Tuck, who suffered from secondary heart failure and grade 3 Chronic Obstructive Airways Disease, was told her disability was controllable with medication and she did not qualify for a grant. She appealed the decision in March last year but died in late 2009.

"The length of delays experienced by LRC clients range from six months to over 18 months," said Sephton.

The Independent Appeal Tribunal, appointed by the minister to hear DG appeals, did not seem to employ any coherent system. Bizarrely, some desperate DG applicants, who wait in vain for the outcome of their appeals, are forced to make new applications for DGs.

In many cases they are successful in their second application but only receive backpay to the date of the new application and not the initial application.

Sephton said the LRC was concerned that the long delays in processing appeals would result in many individuals reapplying and being denied the backpay to which they were entitled.

The Black Sash and the 24 other applicants are bringing the application on their own behalf and that of everyone in the entire country similarly affected by the backlog.

They are asking the Grahamstown High Court to declare the Minister, Sassa and the tribunal to be in breach of their statutory and constitutional duties to determine the appeals without undue delay, and to order them to determine their appeals within 14 days of a court order to that effect.

But they also want the court to order the department to devise and implement a programme to clear the existing appeal backlog within three months and to ensure that all future appeals are determined without undue delay.

This will affect 45 000 or more people across the country waiting for the outcome of appeals. - By ADRIENNE CARLISLE