Universities and TVETs owe NSFAS R11.94bn, says Nkabane
Higher education and training minister Nobuhle Nkabane says universities and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges owe the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) R11.94bn for the 2017 to 2023 academic period.
This was revealed in a written parliamentary question from the DA. Universities owe R10.46bn, while TVETs owe R1.48bn.
Nkabane said the amounts are subject to a reconciliation process between NSFAS and the institutions. 'Institutions are expected to sign an agreement on assets and liabilities relating to the student accounts,' she said. 'NSFAS is preparing the 2024 reconciliations.'
This comes amid challenges facing NSFAS, including student accommodation and funding issues. Recently, students at the Northern Cape Urban TVET college in Kimberley protested by burning offices because of delays in receiving their NSFAS allowances.
The DA urged NSFAS to use the recouped funds to address some of the issues faced by students.
'Given the recent mid-academic year defundings of NSFAS students that force many of them to abandon their studies or leave them destitute and hungry, the DA encourages NSFAS to use the recouped funds to ensure students receive their allowances on time and to ensure no student is defunded midyear, especially if NSFAS previously indicated they would be funded.
'While the DA understands NSFAS must root out payments to students who do not meet the funding requirements, midyear defundings is a NSFAS failure to process students correctly and in time and should not be used to punish students.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
TimesLIVE
4 hours ago
- TimesLIVE
Higher education minister keeps up stonewalling on 'SETA panel'
Higher education and training minister Nobuhle Nkabane continues to dig in her heels over the submission to parliament of the names of the 'independent selection panel' she relied on to make controversial appointments to SETA boards last month. Nkabane had until the close of business on Wednesday to submit records and minutes of the meeting of the 'independent panel' that she says advised on the appointments of the chairpersons of Sector Education and Training Authorities that she was last month ordered to reverse by the presidency. But at the eleventh-hour on Wednesday, it emerged that Nkabane wrote a letter dated June 10 to Tebego Letsie, an ANC MP who chairs the portfolio committee on higher education, asking that the June 10 deadline be extended by a further 20 days, to June 20. The higher education committee had given her the deadline of June 11 last week after she refused to disclose the names and full details of her 'independent panel' at a heated meeting, with Nkabane citing the Protection of Personal Information Act. Nkabane landed in hot water several weeks ago after it emerged that she had appointed controversial and politically connected people to chair the boards of the SETAs. Among them were Buyambo Mantashe, the son of minerals minister Gwede Mantashe who was once deputised by Nkabane in that portfolio. Also on the controversial list were former KZN premier Nomusa Ncube-Dube, former KZN MEC Mike Mabuyakhulu and Johannesburg MMC Loyiso Masuku. The move has pitted Nkabane against President Cyril Ramaphosa, who first ordered her to withdraw the names and most recently also asked her to submit a report to him on the matter. Sources in the higher echelons are adamant that Nkabane's stonewalling on this issue is slowly catching up with her and she will soon run out of options, with some casting doubt on the existence of the 'independent selection panel'. In her letter to Letsie, which has since been shared with all members of the higher education committee, she placed on 'record and confirm my full intention to comply with the portfolio committee's request'. Again citing the POPIA and the Promotion of Access to Information Act, Nkabane said she needed more time to ensure that the information she was preparing to send to parliament would be disclosed in a lawful manner. She told her oversight committee that she had been 'assured that I am legally permitted to disclosed the panellists' details in a lawful manner'. 'For these reasons and in acknowledgment of the panellists' rights to privacy, I have written to each of the members of the selection and evaluation panel and advised them of my intention to comply with the portfolio committee's request. 'However, it remains unlikely that my engagements with them will be completed by the 11 June 2025 deadline. In the circumstances, and to allow the panel members an opportunity to respond to my letter or exercise whatever right they may have, I request an extension of the deadline to 30 June 2025.' The higher education committee was expected to discuss its response to Nkabane's deadline request in the coming days.
Daily Maverick
7 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
The DA's employment equity case attempts to reverse transformation and entrench white minority privilege
The Democratic Alliance's (DA's) legal challenge to the Employment Equity Amendment Act (EEAA) is a thinly veiled attempt to reverse economic transformation and thereby entrench white minority privilege. The party's claim that its court action is in opposition to 'grand social engineering' rings hollow given the enduring legacy of apartheid's social and economic architecture. In truth, the DA's stance on EEAA is an ideological inheritance, a continuation of their historical resistance to redress; part of its raison d'être to fossilise colonial and apartheid racial and gender hierarchies. To appreciate this, let us briefly consider the Department of Employment and Labour's 24th Commission for Employment Equity (CEE) Annual Report (2023/24). It exposes the fiction that the private sector is a transformed happy terrain which the DA seeks to shield from the supposed 'interference' of the government. The report illustrates a country still struggling to shrug off the shadow of economic apartheid. For example, while the white population group constitutes 7.7% of the nation's economically active population (EAP), it nevertheless held 62.1% of top management level positions in 2023. Representing 2.6% of the EAP, South Africans of Indian descent held 11.6% of these posts. At 80.7% of EAP, black Africans hold 17.2% of top management roles, while coloureds, at 9% of the EAP, account for a paltry 6.1%. These disparities are neither natural nor God ordained; they are an outcome of Verwoerdian economic violence against Africans, coloureds and Indians. The CEE report also damningly notes that the majority of recruitment, promotion and skills-development opportunities at this highest echelon continue to flow to the white population group. This is not merit, it is the perpetuation of a boardroom order where white privilege remains the default. Conveyor belt of privilege The disparity reflected at top management cascades downwards to the senior management level where whites at 7.7% of EAP occupy 48.5% of positions, Indians who constitute 2.6% of EAP hold 12.4%, while black Africans hold 27.6% of positions despite being 80.7% of the population. The lion's share of opportunities still flows to those already at the top, which means that transformation is perpetually decked against a conveyor belt of privilege. The private sector emerges as the stronghold of this resistance. While the government has made commendable strides, achieving 74.7% black African representation at top management, the private sector languishes with a pitiful 14% black African representation at this level, effectively maintaining the apartheid-era status quo, where 65.1% of top posts are held by white individuals. Alongside racial disparities is gender inequality. Across all sectors, men dominate top management by more than two-and-a-half times females (roughly 73% male). While the government shows marginally better female representation at 35.4% in top leadership, the private sector registers 10% less, at 25.8%. This glass ceiling, often a result of old boys' clubs dressing up exclusion as 'culture fit', is an outcome of a patriarchal culture which compounds racial exclusion and puts paid to the mythology of a self-correcting market. Nowhere is this private-sector exceptionalism and entrenched bias more grotesque than in the DA-run Western Cape, their self-proclaimed bastion of good governance. There, white males alone occupy a staggering 57.2% of top management positions and 34.4% at senior management level. This is in a province where white people constitute only 17% of the population, compared with 42% coloured and 38% black African – who together form 80% of the residents. This is not a reflection of a 'dearth of qualified candidates'; it is a damning testament to a systemic racial and gender bias thriving under a political administration that pays lip service to equality while actively fighting the tools designed to achieve it. Coloured and black African professionals are corralled into the lower tiers by an exclusionary 'culture fit' that walks and quacks like 'job reservation' in post-apartheid South Africa. These are the gatekeepers making crucial investment and employment decisions and shaping institutional cultures that too often exclude black African, coloured and Indian talent. In its affidavit to the North Gauteng High Court, the DA wilfully misrepresents the amended Section 15A of the EEAA, which empowers the minister to set 'numerical targets', as a draconian imposition of immutable 'quotas'. Yet, the original Employment Equity Act (EEA), in Section 15(3), explicitly clarifies that affirmative action measures 'include preferential treatment and numerical goals, but exclude quotas'. The Constitution itself was drafted to smash apartheid's economic architecture, not to immortalise it, and the Employment Equity Act is one of our key demolition hammers. Transformation failure The current amendments provide a desperately needed impetus precisely because the 'context-sensitive employer-led plans' so cherished by the DA have demonstrably failed to achieve substantive transformation, as the CEE statistics brutally confirm. Furthermore, the Act is far from being the rigid cudgel the DA portrays. Section 15A (3) explicitly provides for nuanced, differentiated targets responsive to occupational levels, sub-sectors or regions. Critically, Section 42(4) explicitly permits any employer to 'raise any reasonable ground to justify its failure to comply'. The Act has consistently emphasised the appointment of 'suitably qualified' individuals. Nothing in the Act prohibits the appointment of a candidate from a non-designated group if a diligent, exhaustive search does not find a suitably qualified candidate from a designated group. In practice, the Act operates much like our critical-skills visa process – nuanced, consultative and always mindful of maintaining standards. This inherent flexibility exposes the DA's opposition as ideological warfare rather than a practical critique. Their true grievance is with the erosion of racial privilege. Qualified franchise, swart gevaar This position is not new for the DA. As recently as 1978, 47 years ago, the DA, then called the Progressive Party, championed a qualified franchise for black people over universal adult suffrage or 'one person, one vote'. Revealing – more than it concealed – its contempt for black people, this party, which claims liberal credentials, argued that black people needed to have attained a certain level of education and own property in order to vote. No doubt a strategy to manage the savages. After rebranding as the Democratic Party, it opposed the Labour Relations Act of 1995 and the original Employment Equity Act of 1998 on grounds that these laws offend against 'meritocracy'. You can accuse the DA as you will, but inconsistency in protecting white minority privilege cannot be one of its faults. The DA's dire prophecy that the Act will cripple investment or decimate employment is an old swart gevaar red herring pure and simple. After the original EEA took effect, between 2001 and 2007, South Africa's economy grew between 4.5%-5.5%, while unemployment dropped by 11%, proving that equity policies can coexist with economic expansion. The real drags on investment are challenges such as energy and logistics bottlenecks and crime, not the presence of black African women and men in the C-suite. By selectively championing Section 9(1) of the Constitution (equality) while ignoring the clear mandate of Section 9(2) – the solemn duty to enact measures that advance those historically disadvantaged by unfair discrimination – the DA reveals its true colours. It aligns itself with every white-supremacist argument ever used to defy meaningful change. This constitutional mandate demands decisive, active intervention, not passive hope or transformation on its terms – optional, non-binding and perpetually negotiable. No Bantustan boardrooms The EEAA, fortified by the undeniable truth of the CEE's findings, stands as an indispensable instrument in our protracted struggle to dismantle structural racism, unlock the full spectrum of South African talent and forge an inclusive economy – a boardroom that is not a Bantustan reflecting a 7% minority. We cannot allow the boardrooms of corporate South Africa to remain gated enclaves. The consequences for doing so would be more than symbolic. These are the individuals who shape investment decisions, workplace cultures and corporate governance. If they do not reflect our nation, neither will our economy. Besides, we can forget about social and political stability – something to which the DA either pays lip service or does not appreciate, or both. The DA has no history of genuinely advancing the interests of black people in general, Africans, coloureds and Indians in particular, in our country. Its historic positions are consistent with this latest offensive and an affront to the eradication of the legacy of colonialism and apartheid. South Africans must ask – whose freedom is advanced if the DA wins? Certainly not the coloured engineer passed over because she 'won't fit the culture'. Not the black African professional locked out of a training programme because the boardroom is 'already diverse enough'. The only winners would be those who mistake yesterday's privilege for today's right.
Eyewitness News
8 hours ago
- Eyewitness News
Gauteng DA accuses provincial govt of failing to prioritise residents' safety
JOHANNESBURG - The Democratic Alliance (DA) has accused the Gauteng government of failing to prioritise the safety of residents in the province, citing that there are more than 100 unfilled vacancies for mechanics within the provincial police department. The party believes this has contributed to delays in the repair of South African Police Service (SAPS) vehicles, which often leads to a shortage of crime-fighting resources. DA's Shadow MEC of Gauteng Community Safety said this undermines crime prevention efforts. "This is unacceptable and shows that the Lesufi-led government is not prioritising the protection of the people of Gauteng or addressing unemployment. Many crimes could have been prevented if these positions had been filled, helping police combat crime by ensuring that vehicles are readily available for policing.' Meanwhile, in response to DA's questions, Premier Panyaza Lesufi wrote that the posts can only be filled by applicants who have the required skills and qualifications.
