Nsfas leaves students ‘starving’ during exams
● The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas) has blamed universities for a funding disaster that has left thousands of needy students across South Africa without money for food.
About 100,000 students have not received their allowances for November — which should have been paid on Tuesday — leaving them “starving” as they write their crucial end-of-year exams.
The scheme said the payment debacle was caused by universities failing to adhere to an instruction in June to stop paying Nsfas allowances directly, because a new system had been put in place.
“This meant Nsfas had to put in [place] control measures to withhold payment,” the scheme’s spokesperson, Slumezi Skosana, said.
Those affected include 23,081 students at North West University, 9,491 at the University of Venda, 1,936 at Durban University of Technology, 431 at the University of Cape Town, and 60% of Nsfas beneficiaries at Stellenbosch University.
And, in a virtual meeting with staff and students at the University of Limpopo on Friday, Nsfas accused the institution of “mixing up” a file that resulted in 2,500 students not being paid their allowances for October and November.
Despite undertaking to ensure payouts were made “within an hour” after the 9am meeting, Nsfas officials could not be contacted for the rest of the day, and no payments were made.
The Sunday Times was sent an audio recording of the meeting, which was attended by senior Nsfas official Thilivhali Mukondeleli; Ismail Ally, the CEO of eZaga, one of the service providers contracted in June to pay allowances to students at the institution; University of Limpopo financial aid officer Thabo Mangale; and student representative council (SRC) president Khutso Mamabolo.
In the meeting, Mukondeleli says the students were blocked from the system in August after it was discovered their personal details had been “mixed up”.
They were found to have the same identity numbers, but their e-mail addresses and cellphone numbers were different.
Mukondeleli said the payments to the 2,500 students could not be effected at the end of last month because the corrected file was sent to Nsfas only on October 26, a day after it had given eZaga the list of students who should be paid.
But Mangale told the meeting she had a problem “when someone is saying the mistake is from the institution”.
She said they submitted the initial data to Nsfas, and that she recalled one of her col
leagues struggling to load the “adjustments”, and they had then received assistance from Nsfas to upload the file.
“I even overheard Thili [Mukondeleli] off [the] record saying … that this is not their [Nsfas’s] mistake or [it’s] none of their business. It’s really wrong to say that, but at the end of the day we are here to find solutions to pay for the students.
“Let’s find common ground and find each other in resolving student issues without blaming the other party,” she said.
When asked when the 2,500 students would be paid, Mukondeleli told the meeting: “If our data people are not in a position to process the payments today [Friday], we will, in the coming hour or so, be coming back to the institution to ask [it] to release the payment.”
However, Mamabolo told the Sunday Times on Friday night that Nsfas had not reverted to the institution and no payments had been made.
Officials at eZaga said they had been trying to get hold of Mukondeleli “for quite a number of hours”.
“We are very frustrated because our meeting was joined by students as observers, and they were under the impression that if the list was sent to eZaga, they would get their money as soon as eZaga received it,” Mamabolo said.
“Our issue is Nsfas is not picking up calls. They did not send the list, and no payments were made, so we are trying to devise means to go to Cape Town early next week with officials from eZaga to directly confront Nsfas officials.”
eZaga said late yesterday that Mukondeleli had confirmed that a response pertaining to the next steps would be shared within an hour of the meeting.
“He requested to be excused from the online meeting as he wanted to attend to the problem with urgency, saying the CEO was available, and he’d like to quickly get guidance on the next steps.
“eZaga never heard back from him or anyone from Nsfas during the course of the day. We sent a follow-up e-mail requesting an update, to which there was no response.”
eZaga said it tried calling Mukondeleli but received no answer. “He eventually called back after close of business and confirmed he had sent an e-mail directly to the University
of Limpopo confirming that they should go ahead with the release of the funds to the affected students.”
University of Limpopo spokesperson Victor Kgomoeswana confirmed that Nsfas sent an e-mail to the university’s financial aid office stating that the university should transfer funds to the affected students. “However, Nsfas has not paid the money to the university to make these transfers possible,” he said.
“Thabo Mangale … declines to comment on the quote attributed to her. Pointing fingers will not resolve the problem of funding for students, and the university would rather concentrate on working with Nsfas and other stakeholders to resolve the problem affecting 16,000 of our 23,000 students,” Kgomoeswana said.
On Wednesday, the SRC and the university dished out food hampers to 2,000 students, including many who were not paid their allowances for October and November. The hampers included maize meal, instant porridge, sugar, tinned fish and beans, salt, cooking oil, packet soup, tea bags, potatoes and onions.
In a bid to assist starving students at the University of Venda, the service provider responsible for paying allowances, Tenet Technologies, took it upon itself to issue food vouchers worth R130 each to 8,000 students on Friday at a cost of more than R1m.
Tenet Technologies’ CEO Ryan Passmore told the Sunday Times the company was pleased to assist the students at such short notice in a time of crisis.
University of Venda student Vhutali Neluonde, 20, said: “We are writing exams, but we don’t have food. How are we supposed to go and write?”
The first-year student, who is pursuing a BA in language practice, said she had been forced to borrow R500 from a family friend this week for food and transport.
Another struggling student studying towards a degree in criminal justice said a friend had been helping her with meals, as her own grocery cupboard was empty. “My aunt bought me a braai pack and tinned food last month, but it’s finished.”
University of Venda spokesperson Takalani Dzaga confirmed that only 177 out of 9,668 students received their November allowance. “No formal communication has been received from Nsfas about when the students will be paid. Students are complaining, but we escalated the matter to Nsfas.”
In a bid to provide emergency assistance to students, North West University began running soup kitchens at its Vanderbijlpark, Potchefstroom and Mahikeng campuses from Thursday.
University of Pretoria spokesperson Rikus Delport said the university had seen an increase in the number of students seeking food assistance in the past week.
University of Stellenbosch spokesperson Martin Viljoen said the institution had approached Nsfas to find out when the rest of the allowances would be paid, “but no official communication from Nsfas has been received”.
DUT spokesperson Alan Khan said students in distress were being assisted through the university’s Phakimpilo food security programme, and “from the occasional benevolence of benefactors”.
Bheki Hlophe, spokesperson for Mangosuthu University of Technology, said the university had a pantry for students who need food “irrespective of the financial support they get”.
University of Johannesburg spokesperson Herman Esterhuizen said the university had a meal assistance programme for needy students.
Nsfas’s Skosana told the Sunday Times that the agency had experienced payment challenges because a notice had been issued to institutions not to pay beyond June, as Nsfas intended to take over the direct payments. However, a few institutions did not adhere to this request and paid for July.
“This meant Nsfas had to put in [place] control measures to withhold payment. Some of the institutional claims had anomalies which Nsfas had to resolve.
“It becomes crucial for universities to adhere to these payment instructions to ensure that deserving students receive their allowances. Failure to comply with these instructions may result in nonpayment to deserving students or Nsfas running the risk of overdisbursements.”
He said a number of institutions didn’t comply with the requirements, which led to the withholding of payments. “We are actively working to address this matter with the affected institutions.”
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Long after graduations and the beautiful dance moves pulled by graduands during conferment ceremonies, the one thing that lingers in my mind is the raw emotion of the parents, and often the grandmothers.
It’s the intense feeling of joy or triumph, relief perhaps, that this one child who has made it could become the light the entire family needs. For some parents, the young adults graduating represent a breakthrough in their families. They are often the first to obtain a university degree.
The parents become emotional because this one graduate might get a real job, which means they might be able to send their siblings to school or extend the small family home so some can stop sleeping in the living room or the kitchen. Or this breakthrough simply means access, finally, to proper food.
Many of those making these breakthroughs are funded by the government’s National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas), which is sadly, like many institutions, now beset by challenges.
Nsfas is supposed to be one of those institutions the ANC brags about ahead of the next elections. Nsfas is, to millions of people, a source of hope. The one thing the ANC has been getting right. Nsfas is a bridge that enables poverty-afflicted youth to achieve the breakthrough necessary to join corporate South Africa.
When the spirit moves the fat cats employed by Nsfas to do their work, they do the most impactful of jobs done by government. They’re the forklift that helps many escape food poverty and become part of the middle class. Nsfas is that important.
This is why reports this week that Nsfas-funded students were forced to resort to soup kitchens, according to NorthWest University spokesperson Louis Jacobs, are really heartbreaking. We all know Nsfas funds students from very poor families.
To have them forced to stand in queues to receive soup and slices of bread while others from well-off families go to
Many of us who struggled through university know what it’s like to be unable to afford bread
university canteens is to humiliate them. Poverty gnaws away at your dignity and, when you’re a student, your confidence too. Standing in that queue to get the soup, not knowing if there will be more soup the following day or if your situation will be expeditiously regularised, will disrupt preparations for exams for many bright kids. That they should be subjected to this is shameful.
One student told TimesLIVE Premium this week that a loaf of bread cost R20 and many at her campus couldn’t afford it. Another wrote on Facebook: “We totally have students who don’t have food. Sad truth.” Another said they’d gone for a day and a half without food.
Those organising soup kitchens are trying to help, and deserve support. The villains are the fat cats in the hallowed halls of Nsfas who are focused on what tenders to dish out to their connected friends, instead of appreciating the historic responsibility of transforming people’s lives.
As we report elsewhere, Nsfas and university officials are blaming each other over the submission of correct files for payments to be made. The snail’s pace with which they’re attending to this boggles the mind. They seem to have stopped caring ages ago. Their suspended CEO, Andile Nongogo, is “a law unto himself who should be fired”, while acting CEO Masile Ramorwesi is reported to be involved in shady tender deals, according to a report by law firm Werksmans and Tembeka Ngcukaitobi SC.
In this cesspool, the poor students, literally and figuratively, must study and compete for top honours. The rest of us must hope the R47bn given to Nsfas to benefit the very poor in our country will be managed appropriately.
Cynics will say: what do you expect from the same people who subject the elderly to pension payment hiccups through the Post Office and not only find it hard to apologise but hold no-one accountable? Fair point.
But, in an election year, we must believe that the ANC of President Cyril Ramaphosa has not given up on winning, right? He opportunistically yet unsurprisingly used the Springboks’ Rugby World Cup win to give us an unscheduled state of the nation address, rattling off a list of the ANC’s achievements.
Many of us who struggled through university know what it’s like to be unable to afford bread. Many of those leading the government and the ANC ought to know this, which is why it is shocking that an institution that is supposed to be a bulwark against poverty for university students, and represent a breakthrough for millions of families, could be allowed to degenerate like this. It is the ultimate betrayal.
When the grandmothers express their joy at graduations, it must not be because they’re relieved that their grandchildren survived such soul-crushing incompetence.