Earlier this year it was revealed that the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) spent R5 billion providing comprehensive bursaries to students who failed to meet its funding criteria.
NSFAS Spokesperson Slumezi Skosana says students misrepresented their information to unduly benefit from NSFAS funding. They add these funds were paid to students before 2019 at a time when the financial aid scheme’s authentication and verification processors were not effective enough.
The financial aid scheme introduced several controls to ensure only deserving students receive funding. This includes partnering with third parties and government departments to authenticate and verify information provided by students.
if somebody said … they are below [the] R350 000 threshold we will check with SARS and when a person says so and so is my guardian or my parents we will check with Home Affairs whether that is the case so that is where we are now, we are able to verify the information.
They also no longer accept affidavits for legal guardians' information. The disallowance of affidavits is critical as NSFAS detected an increased number of students incorrectly who were approved for funding from NSFAS by misrepresenting their parental details and income information.
Rudie Heyneke, from the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA), believes that the administration at NSFAS has not improved.
OUTA has been investigating NSFAS after receiving information from whistleblowers regarding the scheme's affairs. Heyneke says information received from whistleblowers does not paint a pretty picture. They add they welcome the proclamation of an infestation into NSFAS.
In 2022 President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a proclamation allowing the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) to investigate NSFAS with a focus on their operations between 2016 and August 2022.
This investigation led to the discovery of approximately R5 billion spent on undeserving students as well as a case where a College withheld money which was meant to be returned to NSFAS.
Heyneke says there are irregularities at NSFAS, however, they are not able to confirm these irregularities officially. They add that the SIU can investigate these matters more effectively as it will find it much easier to obtain information from NSFAS than from third parties like OUTA.
I do believe, and we had multiple meetings with the SIU and we’ve discussed this and we have handed over our information and obviously, for an institution and an agency like the SIU, it is much easier to get hold of those documents and to take the matter further
The South African Union of Students (SAUS) while there has been improvement in the systems put in place at NSFAS to prevent fraud, they believe there is room for further improvement.
SAUS’ Asive Dlanjwa questioned whether NSFAS can deliver on their mandate as problems at institutions are often caused by the scheme's inefficiency. The lack of coordination between NSFAS and institutions compounds these issues.
“The funds are there but the students last year, even some of them this year you'd find that they do not have money for food, SMU [ Sefako Makgatho Health Science University] three weeks ago they did not have food for some of their students…their accommodation was not paid food was not paid and yet the money is there”
NSFAS funds thousands of students in South Africa. They provide them with allowances for living expenses, accommodation costs and learning material costs. These allowances were paid to institutions that then distributed the money to students.
Skosana says the difference in administrative capabilities of institutions to distribute allowances to students led to the implementation of the new direct payment solution. In 2022, NSFAS announced the implementation of the NSFAS bank account which would see allowances paid directly to students.
