Higher education crisis exposes a ministry being recaptured

South Africa’s Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) and the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) were meant to be engines of social mobility – a bridge between education and employment, funded by the very businesses that need skilled workers.

Instead, the system has degenerated into a playground for political patronage, reckless appointments, wasteful spending and maladministration.

What should be the backbone of our national skills revolution has become a monument to mismanagement and corruption. The ministers within the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) must bear responsibility.

A governance cycle in tatters

As we approach November 2025, just three months into his tenure, Minister of Higher Education Buti Manamela appears to be laying the groundwork for a recapture of both the SETAs and NSFAS. His recent interventions and appointments point towards a continuation of the looting and decay within higher education.

The 21 SETAs were required to renew their governance structures this year – with new boards and chairpersons appointed by March 2025 and new CEOs by 30 September 2025. This five-year governance cycle is supposed to ensure accountability and renewal. When managed properly, it removes weak performers and brings in fresh leadership.

Necessary ministerial changes gone awry

The reshuffle following the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU) in June 2024 finally led to the removal of Blade Nzimande from the higher education portfolio. This was an event that offered hope for reform. His successor, Nobuhle Nkabane, began what appeared to be a promising clean-up operation across the Setas, NSFAS, the National Skills Fund (NSF), and tertiary institutions.

Under Nkabane, early signs of progress emerged: a competent NSFAS board chaired by Dr Karen Stander, and meaningful engagements with civil society aimed at reversing the capture of higher education.

But a year later, her credibility was shaken by a leaked list of politically connected SETA board chair nominees, which was an act of blatant cadre deployment that triggered public outrage.

The list was hastily withdrawn, and a new call for nominations followed in May 2025. By mid-July, through a series of own goals, Nkabane was removed and replaced by Buti Manamela, the person who had filled the role of deputy minister of higher education since 2014.

From hope to reversal

Many had hoped Manamela would build on the progress made and capitalise on the new cycle of board and CEO appointments, to entrench good governance and accountability. The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) even submitted multiple requests to meet the new minister to share evidence of corruption within his various higher education entities. He never took up the requests to engage.

Instead, what has transpired is a swift reversal of gains, along with signs of a deliberate “recapture” of higher education structures. The minister had nearly three months to finalise the appointment of board chairs, members and CEOs. Tight timelines, yes, but feasible. Yet, the opportunity was squandered.

Missing chairs and absent accountability

The process to appoint SETA board chairpersons collapsed entirely. Following the May 2025 re-advertisement, with a mid-June deadline, alas, the process went silent. OUTA and other civil society groups submitted several high-calibre candidates for consideration, and yet none of their nominees was ever contacted or interviewed.

In any functional system, such silence would be unthinkable. Board chairs are not ceremonial figures; they are fiduciary stewards meant to hold CEOs to account. Leaving these posts vacant, or filling them with political loyalists, destroys oversight and undermines reform.

Although Manamela moved quickly to place three SETAs under administration, his department waited until the final legal day of 30 September 2025 to finalise a deeply flawed process for new board appointments.

These boards then supposedly submitted questionable “recommendations” to reappoint seven SETA CEOs. The chaos collapsed the governance cycle entirely, paving the way for rushed reappointments and backroom deals disguised as a “route form submission” to the minister.

A paper trail of panic

A “route form” document dated 1 October 2025, compiled by Mabuza Ngubane in the minister’s office, revealed a hastily constructed plan to reappoint seven outgoing SETA CEOs (Chieta, Inseta, W&R SETA, Fasset, FP&M SETA, MICT SETA and MQA) for another five-year term, while extending another eight CEOs in acting positions for six months.

No advertisements were issued. No meaningful interviews appear to have been held. No shortlist of candidates with substantive input was provided, all of which is in direct violation of SETA CEO appointment regulations.

This “route form” recommendation document was leaked to OUTA on 11 October 2025. The regurgitated CEO appointments began to spark outrage across the sector.

Social media posts revealed some CEOs celebrating their reappointments before official announcements by the minister. A video from Gugu Mkhize’s “welcome back” event at Inseta on 20 October confirmed she already knew, on 30 September, that she had been reappointed, a day before the minister supposedly received recommendations.

By 28 October, no public announcements of these CEO appointments had been published by the minister. Neither are we able to obtain a full list of the new SETA board members and acting or permanent chairpersons. The lack of transparency is outrageous.

Misconduct ignored

Regulations require “satisfactory performance” for CEO reappointments, a standard blatantly ignored. Inseta, for instance, has received qualified (unsatisfactory) audits four years in a row, alongside allegations of maladministration and corruption widely reported by OUTA.

Chieta’s CEO, Yershen Pillay, was reappointed, despite this SETA being under active investigation by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU Proclamation 267 of 2025) for serious maladministration and unlawful expenditure of public funds. While the proclamation covers a period from 1 January 2016, which is before Pillay was appointed, it includes the period from 1 January 2016 to 13 June 2025, which also includes his past five-year tenure as the Chieta CEO. 

These were not strategic decisions. They were bureaucratic cover-ups – last-minute manoeuvres designed to preserve continuity of control, even at the expense of performance and integrity. Many SETAs remain toxic workplaces where staff fear retaliation for exposing wrongdoing.

Even the department’s own legal adviser, advocate Ntombizodwa Kutta, warned that delays beyond 30 September would expose both DHET and SETAs to “legal, governance, and audit risks”. Instead of accountability, the ministry produced administrative theatre, a paper trail crafted to legitimise predetermined outcomes.

Evidence of recapture at NSFAS

Since Stander’s appointment as the NSFAS chairperson in early 2025, the organisation has begun a long-overdue turnaround after years of corruption and mismanagement by former CEO Andile Nongogo and chairperson Ernest Khosa. The new board set about unravelling corrupt tenders designed to siphon student funds through an irregular payment system and an elaborate student accommodation registration and accreditation scheme.

However, reports have now emerged of attempts to compile a legal opinion and avenues to reverse Minister Nkabane’s earlier appointment of the new NSFAS board, paving the way for politically convenient replacements. Several current board members have already resigned in frustration over political interference and what appears to be the protection of dubious conduct by its current acting CEO, a tragic setback for an institution finally finding its footing. Minister Manamela’s silence as this crisis unfolds speaks volumes.

A department adrift

Minister Manamela’s first three months were a chance to restore order and confidence. Instead, his tenure has been marked by inertia and complicity. The ministry’s silence in the face of highly irregular appointments and governance failures betrays not complacency, but consent.

Every rand misused represents a lost apprenticeship, a training programme that never begins and another young South African denied the skills for employment. The Department of Higher Education has turned what should be a mechanism for empowerment into a case study in institutional decay.

The way forward: business must step in

South Africa cannot allow the SETA and NSFAS systems to drift further into dysfunction. The model may be broken, but it can still be repaired, but only if decisive action is taken now.

The dubious SETA CEO reappointments must be urgently reviewed – either through the minister’s intervention or through the courts, by civil society. But more importantly, big business must now call on the President to act. A national summit on skills governance is urgently required to reassess the SETA model, funding mechanisms, governance structures and accountability frameworks.

Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Higher Education must also step up. Oversight cannot remain a box-ticking exercise. The days of rubber-stamping incompetence must end.

A final word to the minister

Minister Manamela, you inherited a broken department, but you also inherited a chance to fix it. By choosing opacity over transparency, and political agendas over merit, you have perpetuated the very dysfunction that has crippled South Africa’s skills pipeline.

Civil society and business will not stand by while abuse of power, secrecy and waste continues to go unchecked. Public patience has run out. It is time for the Presidency to hold the minister and those enabling this collapse to account.

SETAs were created to serve South Africa’s youth. Instead, they have been hijacked to serve bureaucrats, cronies and politically connected networks. This must change urgently. Minister Manamela must decide whether he will be part of the solution or remembered as the man who allowed the rot to spread.