NSFAS under fire as audit finds funds paid to 822 dead students

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1. The Spreadsheet That Refused to Stay Hidden

Late on a March afternoon, a plain courier van stopped at Pretoria’s Union Buildings and handed over a slim, 40-page dossier marked “CONFIDENTIAL – AGSA 2023/24.” Hidden inside one ordinary-looking worksheet were 822 ID numbers, each paired with a name, campus, bank details - and a death certificate issued between 2018 and 2023. Auditors had matched NSFAS’s latest payout file against the Department of Home Affairs population register and discovered that the National Student Financial Aid Scheme had spent R102 million on students the state itself had certified as no longer alive.

Social media exploded within hours. #GhostStudents topped even load-shedding schedules, and by nightfall a remix of the liberation hymn “Senzeni na?” was circulating on TikTok, layered over screenshots of the damning annexures. The 822 names, however, were only the exposed tip of a far larger iceberg. The same report lists 41 733 living beneficiaries who were never eligible: 14 217 came from households earning above the R350 000 cut-off, 9 671 already possessed degrees, 3 301 had failed most of their courses for two straight years, and 14 544 were duplicate profiles created when applicants lost old login details. Together these improper payments consumed R1.9 billion - an amount equal to NSFAS’s entire 2012 budget - gone in a single year.

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2. Follow the Money: A Journey Through Cracked Gatekeepers

Understanding how a deceased teenager can still draw meal money means tracing the route cash travels before it lands in a student’s pocket. Parliament approves the annual NSFAS vote in February, National Treasury then releases money in quarterly chunks to the scheme’s Reserve Bank account. From there it splits into four streams: universities get bulk tuition and residence credits twice a semester; TVET colleges receive funds through provincial education departments; individual “sBux” wallets receive monthly living allowances; and private landlords are paid via an online platform branded “Student Living.”

Each pathway is guarded by a different verification checkpoint. Universities confirm registration, Home Affairs should flag the deceased, SARS validates household income, and the Department of Social Development cross-matches foster-care or disability grants. The catch is that none of these databases talk to one another in real time. They are patched together by middleware built in 2018 by a consortium that also maintains the SASSA grant system. When that contract lapsed in 2022, NSFAS floated - and then abruptly cancelled - a R1.2 billion retender, instead granting the same supplier a six-month “emergency extension.” The Auditor-General’s understated footnote says it all: “No data-cleansing cycle ran between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023.”

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3. How Lindiwe Kept Studying After Her Funeral

Consider Lindiwe Makhubu, a first-year teaching student at the University of Mpumalanga who died in a minibus crash in February 2021. Home Affairs recorded her death on 4 March 2021 under certificate 2467/2021, yet NSFAS kept paying her tuition (R38 400 a year) plus R1 650 monthly meal money until November 2023 - twenty-two months after her funeral. The chain of failure started during the 2019 migration from an old SQL system to SAP HANA, when 184 000 records lost their Home Affairs reference digits. Consultants papered over the gap by inserting a dummy string - “0000000000000” - so the new platform could move forward. Every quarter, when Treasury required proof of spending, NSFAS generated a “clean” list that simply excluded IDs carrying the dummy value. Lindiwe’s profile, one of 14 000 orphaned entries, never faced a life-status check again.

While Lindiwe’s case illustrates system neglect, other leaks point to deliberate threshold fiddling. The means-test ceiling is R350 000 household income, but in 2021 NSFAS quietly swapped “gross” for “taxable” earnings. Retirement-fund deductions and travel allowances immediately pulled families earning up to R400 000 gross below the cutoff. Auditors sampled 2 014 students whose parents drive cars worth more than R600 000; 1 192 still qualified. One father’s taxable income was declared at R348 000, yet his company car allowance alone came to R96 000. No official clicked the “view source” button on SARS eFiling.

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4. Recovery Plans, Blockchain Dreams and the Queue Outside

The government’s recovery blueprint has five pillars - forensic investigation, data scrubbing, claw-backs, biometric re-registration and consequence management - but every element has failed before. After a 2017 probe found 2 200 phony students, NSFAS hired KPMG to recoup R67 million; by 2020 only R3.4 million had come back because most recipients had emptied and shut their accounts. A 2019 attempt to roll out fingerprint verification on fourteen campuses collapsed when Fort Hare students burned the devices, denouncing “surveillance capitalism.”

Legal options are equally fraught. NSFAS can invoke corruption statutes, but must prove fraudulent intent - a tall order when the beneficiary is deceased. Civil claims for unjust enrichment are slow, expensive and politically poisonous. In Maharashtra, India, officials avoid these traps by issuing blockchain-stored degrees tethered to the national biometric ID; the token auto-expires when the holder dies. The pilot cost US$1.3 million, or 0.05 % of that state’s education budget. South Africa already owns the building blocks - smart-ID cards, SARS eFiling APIs, cloud-based student portals - but lacks the legislative stick that forced every Maharashtra university to adopt the system under pain of lost subsidies.

Meanwhile the human bill keeps growing. Divide the 2023 NSFAS budget (R47.7 billion) by the 1.1 million aided students and the average ticket is R43 363. Strip out the R1.9 billion lost to ghosts and double-dippers and the same money must stretch over fewer beneficiaries, pushing the effective cost to R45 085 per legitimate student. At 06:15 on a Monday in Pretoria, 300 anxious learners queue outside the NSFAS office in Thabo Sehume Street. Thabiso Mokoena, a second-year logistics student from TUT, clutches a police affidavit confirming he is alive - an artifact the state itself demanded because its own systems cannot tell the living from the dead. Behind him, a vendor sells R5 vetkoek, profiting from the chaos while R102 million sits in the accounts of students who will never again stand in any queue.

What was the issue with deceased students and South Africa's education fund?

Deceased students in South Africa somehow received R102 million from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) education fund. This was discovered when auditors matched NSFAS payout files against the Department of Home Affairs population register, revealing 822 ID numbers paired with names, campuses, bank details, and death certificates issued between 2018 and 2023.

How did this happen?

This issue stemmed from system failures and a lack of real-time data integration between different government databases. An outdated system migration in 2019 from an old SQL system to SAP HANA led to 184,000 records losing their Home Affairs reference digits. Consultants inserted a dummy string ("0000000000000") to allow the new platform to proceed, meaning these profiles, including those of deceased students, were no longer subjected to life-status checks. Additionally, databases from Home Affairs, SARS, and other departments did not communicate effectively in real-time, allowing payments to continue for students who were no longer alive.

Were there other improper payments besides those to deceased students?

Yes, the issue of deceased students was just the "tip of a far larger iceberg." The same report identified 41,733 living beneficiaries who were ineligible. This included 14,217 students from households earning above the R350,000 cut-off, 9,671 who already possessed degrees, 3,301 who had failed most of their courses for two straight years, and 14,544 duplicate profiles. These improper payments amounted to R1.9 billion, a sum equal to NSFAS's entire 2012 budget.

What was the impact of these improper payments?

The R1.9 billion lost to ghost students and double-dippers meant that the same budget had to stretch over fewer legitimate beneficiaries. This effectively increased the cost per legitimate student from an average of R43,363 to R45,085. This waste of funds also caused significant public outrage and highlighted critical inefficiencies in the system, leading to situations where living students had to prove they were alive to continue receiving aid.

What recovery plans have been proposed or attempted?

The government's recovery blueprint includes five pillars: forensic investigation, data scrubbing, claw-backs, biometric re-registration, and consequence management. However, past attempts at recovery have largely failed. For instance, after a 2017 probe found 2,200 phony students, an effort to recoup R67 million only recovered R3.4 million. A 2019 attempt to roll out fingerprint verification on campuses also collapsed due to student protests. Legal options are complex, as proving fraudulent intent for deceased beneficiaries is difficult, and civil claims are slow and expensive.

What are some potential solutions or measures to prevent this in the future?

One proposed solution, inspired by Maharashtra, India, involves blockchain-stored degrees tethered to a national biometric ID, where the token auto-expires upon the holder's death. South Africa already possesses many of the necessary building blocks, such as smart-ID cards, SARS eFiling APIs, and cloud-based student portals. However, it lacks the legislative framework to mandate such a system across all universities. Improving real-time data integration between departments like Home Affairs, SARS, and NSFAS is crucial. Additionally, regular and effective data-cleansing cycles are essential to prevent a recurrence of these systemic failures.