NSFAS placed under administration amid governance and audit collapse

The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), the country’s largest vehicle for funding poor and working-class students, has been placed under administration following a prolonged governance and operational crisis that Higher Education and Training Minister Buti Manamela said could no longer be resolved through ordinary board structures. Announcing the decision at a briefing in Pretoria on Monday, Manamela confirmed the appointment of professor Hlengani Mathebula as administrator of NSFAS, invoking sections 17A to 17D of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme Act. Manamela said the move was “not taken lightly” but followed months of legal assessment, governance interventions, and the exhaustion of alternative remedies as instability at NSFAS deepened. “NSFAS is one of the most important public institutions in our democratic project. It exists to ensure that young people from poor and working-class backgrounds are able to access higher education and training,” the minister said. “For many families, NSFAS is not an abstract institution — it is the difference between exclusion and opportunity, between hope and despair. “Any instability within NSFAS therefore has implications not only for universities and TVET colleges, but for students, households, communities, the fiscus and public confidence in the ability of the democratic state to advance social justice.” It is for this reason, Manamela said, that the government has a responsibility to act when the effective functioning of the institution is “seriously undermined”. Why government intervened The crisis at NSFAS has been shaped by a combination of legal irregularities, governance breakdowns and institutional failures that, according to the minister, posed a direct threat to students and public confidence in the scheme. Concerns over the legality of the NSFAS board were already present when Manamela assumed office, prompting the department to approach the courts through a self-review process over how the board