Why I paid NSFAS back

IN LIGHT of all that has and is happening at our tertiary institutions, I decided to try this good citizen thing.

I phoned NSFAS, the student financial aid scheme.

You see, in my previous life I had ambitions of being a human rights lawyer, so I went to study law at Wits.

Needless to say, my only contribution there was to their drop-out statistics, much to my mother’s heartbreak and my father’s disappointment.

No two careers are more typical of the so-called ‘missing middle’ than those my parents were in: a nurse and a teacher. But like many parents, they moved mountains to make means for my studies. My mother tells me she often felt guilty eating out, thinking I could be going to bed with only a packet of noodles in my stomach.

And I did, but not because she hadn’t provided for a good meal but because I – drunk with the freedom of being 500km away from home – spent her hard-earned money with reckless abandon.

In my first and second years as a law student, I received NSFAS funding – R3 500 and R9 530 respectively. It was so long ago I don’t remember, but these were the amounts given to me by a NSFAS call centre agent I just spoke to.

I started off speaking as if I was asking for a “friend”. My thinking was, I don’t want them to come after me if I owe them hundreds of thousands of rand.

I had last received a letter from NSFAS more than 10 years ago. So I figured my debt was written off or was too small for them to invest in tracking me down to #PayBacktheMoney.

What motivated my call? Well, I don’t know really. But things can’t go on as they have since #FeesMustFall started, and before then… before the hashtag.

I made the call because… well because eish… erhm because I wanted to do the right thing… I think, yeah that’s it, I wanted to do the right thing.

They can squander the money all they want but my conscience is clear, I am repaying what was LOANED to me to get an education which I f***** up anyway. (Side note: my journalism studies were self-funded, and by ‘self ’ I mean my mother, bless her.)

So, after 13 years, it turns out I owe almost R20 000. The interest is not bad considering how long ago the debt was created, but still, R20 000 is a lot of money, more than I earn in a month. (It’s true what they say about journalism).

I’ve made a payment arrangement, hoping that after two years, I will be done and ONE person can at least start their education BECAUSE I paid NSFAS back.

One more thing: when my colleagues, Sihle Says Mlambo and Mphathi S Nxumalo, were done laughing at me for being so stupid as to poke a resting snake out of its hole, they pointed out that I had been able to acquire a bond just last year, meaning nowhere on my credit record was there a reference to my outstanding debt to NSFAS.

Now if government was serious about recovering the millions owed to NSFAS, would they not employ the same – but hopefully less irritating – methods employed by retailers for debt collecting?

Not even an advert to try to guilt us into paying our debt to NSFAS.

A soppy advert about a smart child, let’s make her the head of a parentless home. No matter their domestic responsibilities to their siblings and household, this child never puts their education aside. I can see it now…

Black screen, violin music, the glow of a single candle. The camera zooms in and the child’s face is illuminated, she looks tired, and has to mouth the words in her book so she doesn’t fall asleep while studying.

A voice-over, hers, talking about her dreams and aspirations.

She does well in matric, is celebrated by her teachers and admired by her classmates.

She has been accepted to study, let’s say medicine, and will eventually find a cure for whatever killed her parents. She is going to make it, she is going to educate her siblings and they will go on to be exemplary citizens.

BUT… the camera zooms in tight on her face, a single tear falling. She says: “Because YOU didn’t pay back your NSFAS debt, I didn’t get funding to go to university.” Another voice-over, this time Treasure Shabalala… “If you don’t pay back NSFAS, you are killing the hope of a child, a family, a community, South Africa.” Fade to black. Who needs a car when I can educate a child, give a young adult a career, a family stability, a community hope and a country a skilled workforce?

Nosipho Mngoma is a journalist at the Daily News. She posted this piece on Facebook on Monday.