Last week saw the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) release leaked recordings which expose damning allegations of corruption involving the Higher Education Minister and NSFAS Chairperson. This comes just months after the CEO of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), Andile Nongogo, was terminated after irregularities were found involving him and the new direct payment system.
Now, NSFAS has announced that their Board Chairperson, Ernest Khosa, has voluntarily taken a 30-day leave of absence as an investigation into the leaked recordings is done.
Board Chairperson, Mr Ernest Khosa, voluntarily tabled a notice of thirty days leave of absence in order to enable the Board to deal with all the allegations against him as contained in the recordings distributed by the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA).
On Wednesday, the NSFAS Board held a meeting to discuss the 2024 academic year and NSFAS' readiness. Here, the Board heard from Khosa that he never got any money for his own benefit and that money was not given to the Minister.
Both the Minister and NSFAS revealed that due to the allegations against Khosa, he has now been receiving death threats as well as threats against his family.
The Board takes this opportunity to thank Mr Khosa for his honourable, brave and responsible decision to voluntarily take leave of absence, and hails his decision as a responsible and conscious step to advance good corporate governance, transparency and accountability. The Board would like to emphasise that this decision should not be interpreted as an admission of guilt on the part of the Chairperson.
What was said in the leaked recordings?
The leaked voice recordings revealed the following:
- Service providers allegedly paid millions of rands to the Minister and Chairperson with the the South African Communist Party (SACP) receiving R1 million. In return, tenders and protection for service providers were provided.
- A day before it was announced that Andile Nongogo, the former NSFAS CEO, would be placed on special leave, Khosa met with Thula Ntumba, husband of Tshegofatso Ntumba, who is one of two Coinvest directors.
- Khosa had the opportunity to exclude everything that would possibly create a problem for Nongogo and was aware of Nongogo’s wrongdoing in the past
- Khosa said he would make sure that they would not be caught out.
- Khosa wanted to appoint a legal firm which he could control to handle the case with irregularities found with the NSFAS direct payment system, Werksmans Attorneys
- Khosa changed the contents of a letter signed by Nongogo
- The Minister was aware of their relationships with the Fintechs and suspected that investigators were tracking their cell phones
- Should service providers contracts be cancelled, "it should be done in such a way that Coinvest would not look “guilty”"
According to OUTA, these recordings show that there is a network within the Department and NSFAS which public officials and service providers use to benefit from.
The NSFAS Board has now appointed a legal firm to investigate the allegations made against Khosa with NSFAS saying that this will, "be handled with due diligence and integrity".
The Minister is yet to announce who he plans to appoint as the acting board chairperson in the absence of the chairperson. The NSFAS Board is also yet to announce a new NSFAS CEO.
