Workplace culture is like the foundation of a building — not visible, but essential to stability, growth, and the overall experience of the people within it. In higher education, particularly, where institutions are shaped as much by people as by systems and strategy, culture increasingly influences not only the employee experience but also the broader quality of organisational sustainability.

Across industries globally, conversations around employee wellbeing, flexibility, and organisational culture continue to evolve. Increasingly, employees are seeking workplaces that offer more than employment alone. There is growing emphasis on environments that foster belonging, collaboration, professional development, and a sense of shared purpose. As institutions expand and workforces become larger and more dynamic, maintaining meaningful human connections can become increasingly complex.

In just two months at MANCOSA, one of the things that has stood out most to me is the institution’s effort to maintain that sense of connection across its large national staff complement. In large organisations, growth and scale can sometimes create distance between people. Yet what I have observed so far is a workplace culture that appears conscious of balancing institutional growth with people-centred values.

What has been particularly noticeable is that the culture is not defined by a single initiative or carefully crafted statement. Rather, it reveals itself in consistent day-to-day interactions between colleagues, leadership, and teams. Often, it is the smaller moments within organisations that shape how supported people feel — a willingness to assist, an openness to share knowledge, or simply the feeling that individuals are acknowledged beyond their job titles.

Early in my first few weeks, I experienced an unexpected health setback, which required me to take time to recover. Naturally, as someone new to an organisation, I felt a level of apprehension. What stood out, however, was the understanding and encouragement I received to prioritise my wellbeing. The experience reinforced an important perspective on workplace culture: employee wellness is not separate from performance and productivity but forms part of the foundation that supports both.

This reflects a broader shift taking place across professional environments. Increasingly, organisations are recognising that workplace wellness is no longer viewed simply as an employee benefit, but as an important component of organisational resilience, engagement, and long-term sustainability.

MANCOSA’s efforts to create flexible and people-conscious approaches, provide access to wellness-driven initiatives and resources, and prioritise employee wellbeing through wellness initiatives and by encouraging employees to prioritise their health have demonstrated that even relatively small considerations can have a meaningful impact on morale, engagement, and the overall workplace experience. In fast-paced professional spaces, these considerations often shape how connected and valued employees feel within their organisations.

Equally meaningful has been the support and openness from colleagues during my transition into a new role. Joining a new organisation can often feel overwhelming, particularly within large and evolving institutions. However, I have experienced a strong culture of collaboration and guidance, where people are willing to share institutional knowledge and support one another. Those interactions may seem small on the surface, but they play a significant role in helping new employees navigate unfamiliar environments with greater confidence.

Another aspect I have appreciated is the accessibility of leadership. In many professional environments, hierarchy can unintentionally create distance between employees and leadership teams. Yet simple moments of conversation, approachability, and engagement can contribute meaningfully to creating a more connected workplace culture. These interactions often shape how comfortable employees feel in contributing ideas, asking questions, and developing a stronger sense of belonging within an institution.

I have also come to appreciate the importance of understanding an institution’s history and journey. In fast-moving workplaces, it is easy to focus only on immediate responsibilities without fully understanding the broader story behind an organisation’s growth and evolution. Opportunities to engage with that history create a stronger sense of purpose and context. What I found particularly interesting was how institutional milestones and stories are shared intentionally. Initiatives such as MANCOSA Connect, a coffee-table publication documenting the institution’s journey and the people behind it, are among the many ways the institution seeks to contribute to a sense of continuity and shared identity. It was fascinating to see that the recognition extended beyond the publication itself, acknowledging the collective contribution and the individuals behind the institution’s progress. In growing organisations, these moments can help employees feel connected to something larger than their individual roles.

Exposure to experiences beyond routine day-to-day responsibilities has also highlighted the growing importance of professional development within modern workplaces. Increasingly, employees are looking for environments that provide opportunities for learning, networking, leadership development, and broader professional exposure. Organisations that create spaces for ongoing growth are often better positioned to cultivate engagement and long-term organisational commitment. Workplace culture, therefore, extends beyond internal organisational dynamics and can ultimately influence how institutions deliver value to the communities and students they serve.

Of course, two months is still a relatively short period in any organisation, and my perspective is still evolving. However, my observations thus far have reinforced the idea that organisational climate and employee experience are rarely shaped by large statements or formal messaging alone. More often, it is reflected in everyday interactions, in how people support one another, and in the extent to which organisations recognise the human aspect of professional life.

At a time when workplace expectations continue to shift globally, institutions that intentionally cultivate environments of well-being, connection, and shared purpose may ultimately be better positioned to sustain both organisational growth and the people who contribute to it. In many ways, that balance may become one of the defining characteristics of meaningful and sustainable workplaces in the future of higher education.

Get the balance right!

Esivani Naidoo is a Student Experience Specialist/Online Education Practitioner at MANCOSA.

©Higher Education Media Services.

‘I receive this recognition tonight with humility, but also with caution. Because the work of a police officer is not performed for applause.

It is not performed for headlines.

It is not performed for awards.

It is performed for the people of South Africa.

As a disciplined member of the South African Police Service, I took an oath many years ago; an oath to uphold the Constitution, protect the citizens of this country and defend the rule of law without fear or favour.

That oath does not change depending on political convenience, media pressure, public opinion or personal consequence.

Therefore, this award must never be misunderstood.

The media briefing of 6 July 2025 was not an exercise in popularity. It was not a campaign. It was not an attempt to become a public figure. It was an act of duty. An act informed by conscience. An act informed by the love of this country. And an act informed by the responsibility I carry as the Provincial Commissioner of KwaZulu-Natal.

When institutions begin to fear the truth more than they fear criminality, society enters dangerous territory.

South Africa is standing at such a crossroads.

We cannot continue to normalise corruption.

We cannot continue to protect incompetence.

We cannot continue to romanticise criminality while honest citizens live behind burglar bars, businesses collapse under extortion, communities are terrorised by organised crime and public trust in institutions continues to erode.

The truth is painful; A capable state cannot coexist with compromised institutions.

And the process of renewal cannot selectively target certain sectors while others remain untouched.

The spring cleaning currently confronting the criminal justice system must cut across all sectors of society; government departments, municipalities, law enforcement agencies, the private sector and yes, even the media itself.

Every institution in this country must ask itself;

Are we serving South Africa, or are we serving ourselves? Because patriotism is not found in slogans.

It is found in accountability.

It is found in ethical leadership.

It is found in courage.

And it is found in the willingness to place country before comfort.

We do not all have to agree.

We do not all have to be friends.

But we all have a responsibility to serve the interests of South Africa. This country does not need heroes.

It needs principled people.

People who will do their jobs honestly when nobody is clapping for them.

People who understand that integrity is not a performance, but it is discipline.

Accepting this award therefore does not suggest that all is well in our country.

It is precisely because all is not well that every one of us must recommit ourselves to making it well.

If South Africa is serious about a national reset, then that reset must include all of us; political leadership, law enforcement, the judiciary, business, civil society and the media. No institution can place itself above scrutiny while demanding accountability from others.

Tonight, I accept this award primarily on behalf of the men and women in blue.

➢ The police officers who leave their homes every day uncertain if they will return.

➢ The detectives working through the night to secure convictions.

➢ The officers who continue to serve with integrity despite intimidation, despite limited resources and despite relentless criticism.

➢ The members who still believe in the badge.

➢ The members who still believe that the SAPS can and must become a trusted instrument of justice for the people of South Africa.

There are many honest and committed police officers in this country.

Men and women who refuse to surrender this organisation to corruption, criminal infiltration or institutional decay.

This recognition belongs to them.

➢ To those who continue to carry the integrity of the organisation.

➢ To those committed to building a safe, ethical and capable state.

➢ To those who understand that service to the people is not a slogan - it is a sacred responsibility.

History will not judge us by the titles we held, the awards we collected or the speeches we delivered.

History will judge us by whether we defended the truth when it mattered. Whether we protected the weak when it was difficult.

And whether we placed the future of South Africa above personal interest. May we all find the courage to do so.’

©Higher Education Media Services.

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Over time, June 16 1976, has come to be celebrated primarily as a moment of resistance against the forced imposition of Afrikaans in schools in Soweto. That injustice was undoubtedly one catalyst for the uprising. Yet to reduce this watershed moment to a single cause is to miss its deeper meaning, its true contributions to the liberation struggle, and its lasting relevance for our own time. No event of historical importance can be understood apart from its wider context.

In this brief reflection, I merely point to several key and yet neglected dimensions of the uprising: its internationalism; its engagement with the national question; its reinforcement of worker struggles; its embrace of collective leadership and rejection of personality cults; its non‑sectarian character; and its emphasis on praxis.

Other liberation struggles deeply influenced the Black Consciousness organisations and the youth of 1976. They drew inspiration from the independence struggles in Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique, as well as from popular resistance against US imperialism in South America and Asia.

Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed were widely circulated and read in the townships. Students were also keenly aware of the struggles of African Americans, the Vietnamese struggle for national liberation, and other oppressed peoples worldwide.

This internationalist consciousness found explicit expression in protests against the 1976 visit of US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. On September 18, 1976, the New York Times reported that students in Soweto had demonstrated against Kissinger’s three‑day visit, during which he held talks with Prime Minister John Vorster. The newspaper noted that many young protesters were killed: “The shooting began after students carrying placards denouncing Mr Kissinger gathered in schoolyards in the black township, singing black protest songs.” One placard called Kissinger “a murderer”; another read: “Kissinger, get out of Azania—don’t bring your disguised American oppression into Azania.”

Unity beyond apartheid’s racial categories

The apartheid regime sought to divide the oppressed majority through the Bantustan policy, the Group Areas Act, and even the spatial segregation of townships such as Soweto into so‑called ‘Zulu’ and ‘Sotho’ sections. Yet the students of 1976 mounted a determined challenge to these divisions. The slogan “One Azania, One Nation” — baptised in blood — resonated as a revolutionary cry. Consider the names of the young people and the places where they fell: not only Soweto, but also Manenberg, Elsies River, Montagu, Mamelodi, Alexandra, Gugulethu, Mossel Bay and Athlone. Unlike the crass racial and tribalistic identity politics of today, the youth of 1976 refused to see themselves through apartheid’s imposed categories. They were not ‘minorities’, nor ‘Zulu’, ‘Coloured’, ‘Indian’ or ‘Xhosa’. They were simply the oppressed united in struggle.

Moreover, though many township residents arrived from neighbouring countries and lived ‘illegally’ in South Africa, they were accepted and respected by their communities. For instance, Sibongile Mkhabela (née Mthembu), one of eleven young people accused of leading the uprising, was the daughter of Mozambican parents and a pillar of strength in the community, as were many others from Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi and elsewhere.

Strengthening worker struggles

The 1976 uprising followed closely on the heels of massive urban worker strikes that had begun in Durban in 1973 and spread across the country; similar strikes even took place in Namibia before that. By 1979, the apartheid regime was forced to amend labour legislation to grant Black workers the legal right to form and register trade unions. Crucially, many of the key shop stewards who built that union movement had been active participants in the 1976 uprising.

The students who confronted the apartheid state, together with the workers of 1973, ushered in an unprecedented wave of struggle against racial capitalism. They demonstrated that the system was not impregnable and could be challenged. They showed that resistance could be conducted in a non‑sectarian way: one did not need to belong to a particular political party to fight the state. They proved that even school‑going youth could join the fight, and that the struggle was never confined to Soweto alone, despite what some accounts of June 16 suggest. The events of 1976 laid the foundations for a far broader challenge to the racial capitalist state; it reached even greater heights in the 1980s as workers and community organisations joined forces.

Collective leadership and the defeat of fear

The students of 1976 broke the climate of fear that had subdued older generations after the violent persecutions of the 1960s. They succeeded in bringing organisations together, especially through collaboration with their families and the worker organisations to which those families belonged. They cultivated a new corps of radical organic intellectuals rooted in grassroots organisations, and they placed a premium on collective learning and shared leadership.

We remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice. The most fitting memorial is neither statues nor empty rhetoric, but the urgent work of building a better country than the one we inhabit today. For many young people, thirty‑two years into democracy has become a nightmare. Post‑apartheid capitalism has failed to deliver on its promises—and, by its very nature, it cannot. Too often, young people are blamed for being undisciplined, lazy or lacking in the ‘right skills’ or entrepreneurial spirit. We seldom blame the system itself: the structural unemployment that forecloses any prospect of gainful employment for so many; the billboards, television screens and print media that bombard the youth with the seductive elixir of consumer goods; a social order in which human relations mean nothing unless they are commodified. All of this unfolds in a climate where corruption has embraced those once lionised by the makers of official history, and where struggle ‘icons’ have become affluent overnight.

A polycrisis born of racial capitalism

Who can deny that the country is in the grip of a polycrisis engendered by racial capitalism? The evidence is everywhere: levels of inequality, unemployment, poverty, food insecurity, ecological degradation, poor quality education, inadequate healthcare, soaring energy, transport and food costs, and the crushing burden of debt that most people must endure daily through no fault of their own. Even the middle classes are not spared these impoverishing effects. Who can argue that narrow, elitist, and corporate interests and their corruption do not rule the day? Who can ignore the utter desperation that fuels the psycho‑social trauma, gender‑based violence and other forms of social dysfunction we witness daily?

Lessons for today: xenophobia and internationalism

The lessons of June 1976 are also vital for the struggle against contemporary xenophobia. Opportunistic politicians exploit the current crises to blame, scapegoat and attack ‘foreigners’, rather than confronting the real causes of inequality, poverty and unemployment. The uprising reminds us of the importance of internationalism and the linking of struggles. The same crude oil extracted from the Niger Delta, the minerals of the Congo and the coal of South Africa fuel the machinery of Israeli occupation and genocide. This connects the dispossession of Palestinian lives and land directly to the exploitation of African resources by big corporations, African elites and warlords.

The logic and violence of racial capitalism, colonialism and extraction are not confined to any single place or time. They operate across borders, binding Africa, Palestine and other sites of struggle into a shared history of resistance.

Palestine stands today as a global front against colonialism, imperialism, fossil‑fuel capitalism and white supremacy. It is incumbent upon all of us — solidarity activists, climate justice advocates, anti‑racist and anti‑imperialist organisations, and faith‑based groups — to actively support the Palestinian liberation struggle and their right to resist. The genocide in Gaza is a harbinger of worse to come if we do not organise and fight back vigorously, including through the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against apartheid Israel. The empire and its global ruling classes are willing to sacrifice millions of Black and Brown bodies, and working‑class people everywhere, so that they can continue accumulating capital, amassing wealth and maintaining their domination.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro recently observed, “Genocide and barbaric acts unleashed against the Palestinian people are what awaits those in the Global South. What we see in Gaza is the rehearsal of the future.”

The youth of 1976 understood that freedom is indivisible. They risked everything not for statues or hollow commemorations, but for a world in which human beings are no longer reduced to commodities, ethnic labels or disposable labour. Their legacy demands nothing less from us today: to see our struggles as linked, to reject the divisions that power imposes, and to build a genuine liberation for all.

That is the true significance of 1976 - and the unfinished business before us now. Steve Biko understood this when he argued, “The great powers of the world may have done wonders in giving the world an industrial and military look, but the great gift still has to come from Africa — giving the world a more human face.”

Salim Vally is the director of the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation (CERT), a professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg, the DHET-NRF SARChI Chair in Community, Adult and Workers’ Education (CAWE) and a visiting professor at Nelson Mandela University.

© Higher Education Media Services.

It’s no secret that South Africa’s higher education system is under increasing pressure. Each year, more students qualify for and apply for tertiary study than the system can accommodate.

Across the African continent, similar dynamics are playing out as populations grow and demand for education rises. By 2030, the African Union Commission predicts, 40% of the world’s young people will be African, and 75% of Africa’s population will be under 35. More young people are seeking, and will continue to seek, pathways into the economy, and higher education remains one of the most important of those pathways.

The question now is how we respond. How are we going to create enough capacity to accommodate these young people? That will be critical to Africa’s future economic prosperity.

Access as a gateway to opportunity

Access to higher education is closely tied to economic participation. For many, it represents the most direct route into formal employment and long-term career development. At a national level, it plays a critical role in building the skills base required for growth.

When access is constrained, opportunity is constrained with it. Expanding higher education is therefore not only an educational priority, but an economic one.

Why building more is not enough

The obvious answer to rising demand might seem to be building more higher education institutions or enlarging existing campuses. However, while this approach has a role to play, it is insufficient on its own.

Expanding physical infrastructure is capital-intensive and slow. It cannot easily keep pace with the real scale and speed of demand. The truth is that it’s too late to solve the access challenge simply by building enough new institutions. This does not mean expansion is unnecessary. It means that it cannot be the only strategy.

From expansion to productivity

Meeting demand at scale requires a shift in thinking. Instead of asking how to build more of the same system, the more important question is how to make the system more efficient. Scale requires a dramatic improvement in efficiency, which is achieved through rising productivity in the delivery of higher education.

In this context, productivity is not about doing more with less in a reductive sense. It is about enabling more students to access, progress through, and complete higher education, without a proportional increase in cost or a decline in quality.

It also requires institutions to rethink how learning is structured and delivered. We can’t keep doing what we’ve always done or model our efforts on universities in the developed world, where the cost per student is tens of thousands of dollars per year. We need to fundamentally rethink our operating models.

Flexible pathways for diverse students

One of the most important levers for scaling access is flexibility.

The traditional model of higher education assumes a relatively uniform student: full-time, campus-based, and able to progress through a fixed academic calendar. In reality, many students are balancing study with work, family responsibilities, or financial constraints.

More flexible pathways, including part-time options, blended learning, and multiple entry points throughout the year, allow a wider range of students to participate. They also make it easier for students to continue their studies when circumstances change, improving both access and completion. Flexibility will also enable the institution to use its existing resources more efficiently.

Modular learning and stackable progress

Closely linked to flexibility is the idea of modular learning. Breaking qualifications into smaller, recognised components allows students to build their education over time. They can complete parts of a qualification, enter the workforce, and return later to continue their studies.

This reduces the upfront cost and risk of committing to a full qualification, making higher education more accessible. It also aligns more closely with the realities of modern careers, where learning is increasingly continuous rather than confined to a single period of study.

Technology as an enabler of scale

Technology plays a central role in enabling these more flexible and modular approaches.

Technology enables higher education providers to reach students beyond physical campuses, deliver content at scale, and support diverse learning paces and pathways. When used effectively, it can also improve consistency and quality across larger cohorts.

However, technology alone is not a solution. Simply moving traditional lectures online does not address the underlying challenge. To meaningfully scale, technology must be used to redesign how learning is delivered and experienced.

Balancing access, quality and affordability

Any effort to scale higher education must contend with a fundamental tension. Expanding access should not come at the expense of quality, nor should it place education further out of financial reach.

This is where productivity becomes critical. By improving resource use, institutions can expand access while maintaining standards and managing costs.

For students, this means more viable pathways into higher education. For institutions, it means developing models that are both sustainable and responsive to demand.

A shared challenge

Scaling higher education is not a challenge that institutions can address alone.

It requires collaboration across the system. Policymakers play a role in enabling more flexible models and recognising alternative pathways. Employers benefit from a broader and more diverse talent pipeline. Institutions must be willing to rethink long-standing assumptions about delivery and structure.

Globally, higher education needs to address questions of quality and relevance for the future, but the defining challenge of the next decade in our South African context is scale. We must find ways to serve far more students, more effectively.

Dr Stan du Plessis, an economist and academic, is the CEO of STADIO Higher Education.

Higher Education Media Services.

Buti Manamela delivered his maiden Budget Vote speech as Minister of Higher Education and Training in the National Assembly earlier today. It was themed: Digital Transformation, the Skills Revolution, and the Future Size and Shape of the PSET System.

Below is his address in full.

“I rise today to table Budget Vote 17 — my first as Minister of Higher Education and Training. I do so with a clear sense of the task before us, and a clear sense of the moment in which we stand.

We stand on the eve of Youth Month. We stand fifty years from the morning of 16 June 1976, when school children walked out of their classrooms and into the streets of Soweto, and changed the course of our history. They marched. They fell. And they bequeathed to us a country in which the right to learn — in any language we choose, in any subject we are capable of mastering — is no longer up for debate.

But the inheritance is incomplete.

The youth of 1976 fought for the right to learn.

The youth of 2026 demand more. They demand the right to learn, the right to skill, the right to innovate, the right to work, and the right to participate meaningfully in the economy of their own country.

This Budget Vote is our answer to that demand.

Honourable Members,

This budget is tabled within the framework of the Government of National Unity, and it is anchored in three commitments: inclusive growth and job creation; the fight against poverty and inequality; and the building of a capable, ethical and developmental state. Through the Medium-Term Development Plan, this portfolio carries direct responsibility for some of the most consequential outcomes of this programme of government.

The State of the Nation Address was unambiguous. The President called for a fundamental overhaul of the skills system. He called for a dual training model that links classroom learning to workplace experience. He placed the strengthening of our TVET colleges at the heart of our occupational training effort.

This Vote gives effect to that mandate.

On the shoulders of those who came before

Honourable Members,

Before I speak of what must change, allow me to speak of what we have inherited — and from whom.

The post-school education and training system we now lead was not built overnight, and it was not built by any one of us. It is the work of three decades of democratic policy-making. It is the work of Ministers and officials who came before us, in this administration and in previous ones. It is the work of Councils and Quality bodies, of Vice-Chancellors and College Principals, of researchers and registrars, of lecturers and learners — and of millions of South Africans who placed their hopes in education when they had little else.

The 2013 White Paper for Post-School Education and Training set this sector on its current footing. The National Student Financial Aid Scheme, the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations, the Council on Higher Education, the South African Qualifications Authority, the consolidation of Further Education and Training into Technical and Vocational Education and Training, the establishment of Community Education and Training as a sector in its own right — none of these existed in their present form before our democracy. They are the architecture of our project. They were built by South Africans who believed, as we still believe, that education is the most reliable instrument of redress in any society that takes equality seriously.

I want to acknowledge, in particular, those who hold up this system every day. The lecturers who teach in conditions that would defeat most professions. The Principals and Vice-Chancellors who manage institutions of growing complexity. The administrators and registrars who keep the doors open. And the workers — the cleaners, the security personnel, the catering and grounds staff — without whom no campus, no college, no community learning centre would open its gates in the morning. The post-school system is held up, every single day, by their labour.

What this Vote proposes, therefore, is not rupture. It is the next phase of a project that has been under way for thirty-one years. We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. From that vantage, we can see further. And from that vantage, we owe them — and we owe ourselves — the discipline of doing the work that remains.

The problem we must name

Honourable Members,

We will not solve a problem we are unwilling to name.

The problem before us is not simply that South Africa needs more education. We have expanded enrolment dramatically in three decades of democracy. The problem is that the link between education, skills, work and industrial development is too weak — and in some places it is broken.

We have a world-class post-school education system that produces graduates and cutting-edge research outputs. Yet in some respects it performs poorly — especially in producing the mid-level technical and vocational skills our economy now demands.

Too many young people complete qualifications without transitioning into work.

Too many employers report that they cannot find the skills they need, while graduates remain unemployed. And the path to self-employment is hobbled by poor entrepreneurial education.

Our TVET and CET colleges are still under-scaled relative to the size of our population and the demands of our economy. TVET is central to the production of mid-level technical and vocational skills. CET provides the second-chance opportunities that reconnect young people and adults to the education and training system. Both must grow — and both must improve.

Our SETAs receive billions of rands in skills levies — but the translation of that income into employment outcomes has not always been visible enough to the public who pay for it. SETAs must improve their core mandate: to determine workplace and sector skills needs, and to ensure that those needs inform the design of industry-relevant curricula.

At the same time, let it be said clearly: SETAs have played a positive role that should not be dismissed — including in the training of artisans and in the recapitalisation of our TVET colleges. But it cannot be business as usual.

NSFAS has expanded access to higher education on a scale unmatched anywhere on the African continent — but its sustainability and its governance must be put on a sound footing.

And the world of work itself is being remade — by digital and artificial intelligence technologies — faster than our institutions are adapting.

But Honourable Members, let us not pretend that all of these are problems of the post-school system alone.

Low economic growth, a bias toward capital-intensity, and the sluggish performance of our productive sectors — manufacturing, construction, the agro-processing value chain — also constrain employment, especially among the youth.

It is said that education institutions provide the foundation, but skills are formed in the workplace. Technical skills, in particular, require a thriving industrial sector for students to gain practical training, and a growing economy capable of absorbing them once they qualify.

The Skills Revolution, therefore, is not only a project of this Department. It is a project of our economy.

Honourable Members, let us say this plainly.

Access without success is not enough.

Success without employability is not enough.

And skills without economic absorption are not enough.

That is the challenge that this Budget Vote must rise to meet — and it is a challenge we must rise to meet together with our colleagues across government and across society.

What we have done

Since my appointment, I have asked of every official, every entity, every council, and every meeting one question:

where is the system stuck, and what will it take to unstick it?

The answer has produced four streams of work that build directly on the institutional foundations laid by my predecessors.

First, we have begun to stabilise governance across the system. We have moved decisively on NSFAS. Where the institution fell short of the public trust placed in it, we acted within the law to restore order, protect students, and put in place a remedial path. SETAs that were not performing have been placed under administration. Audit action plans are in implementation across our entities. Council development and pre-employment screening for senior managers are being institutionalised. Consequence management is no longer a slogan; it is becoming a discipline.

Second, we have begun to reposition TVET as the engine of occupational skills. From January 2026, twenty-four new occupational qualifications have entered our colleges. We have set a target of thirty per cent of TVET enrolment in occupational qualifications and skills programmes. Five hundred TVET lecturers will obtain formal qualifications. One hundred and fifty TVET council members will be trained. We are establishing five regional industrial skills compacts. And by 30 September 2026, we will table a TVET Turnaround Strategy that confronts the system’s chronic challenges head-on.

Third, we have begun to build digital and future-skills capacity. By March 2027, we will complete a feasibility study for online public TVET, table a TVET digital transformation strategy, launch four new programmes on the National Open Learning System, integrate Khetha career services to reach two hundred and fifty thousand clients, and establish a Skills Development Zone.

Fourth, we have begun to rethink the size and shape of the system itself. We are finalising the university enrolment plan for 2025 to 2030. We are developing a five-year TVET enrolment plan. We are auditing the CET landscape. We are conducting feasibility work for the Ekurhuleni University. We are converting agricultural colleges into higher education colleges. We are planning new medical and veterinary schools. And we are addressing student housing and infrastructure as the precondition for any meaningful expansion.

This is the foundation. From this foundation, this Budget Vote begins the climb.

The Vote

Honourable Members,

Vote 17 is allocated R149.2 billion for the 2026/27 financial year. Over the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, this Department will administer a total of R468 billion.

The Vote grows from R142.4 billion in 2025/26 to R149.2 billion in 2026/27. Transfers and subsidies account for 90.4 per cent of the total — R134.9 billion. This is, structurally, a transfer budget. And that is precisely why the question of how those transfers translate into outcomes is the central question of the year.

University Education receives R100.1 billion, approximately 82.4 per cent of the programme budget.

TVET receives R14.7 billion, a 6.3 per cent increase that begins to reflect the prioritisation we have promised.

CET receives R3.3 billion — a figure that names, rather than disguises, the structural under-funding of community education in our country. It is a figure we will have to revisit.

NSFAS grows from R48.8 billion in 2025/26 to R54.6 billion by 2028/29.

Skills levies are projected at R27.7 billion in 2026/27, rising to R31.1 billion by 2028/29.

Honourable Members, these are large numbers. But the public is not interested in the size of the numbers. The public is interested in what the numbers do.

This budget must therefore become more than a budget of transfers.

It must become a budget of transformation.

A budget of coordination.

A budget of skills.

A budget of accountability.

A budget of outcomes.

Priority One — Digital transformation

Honourable Chairperson,

The first priority of this Vote is digital transformation — not as a technology programme, but as the backbone of a modern post-school education and training system.

For too long, digital transformation in our sector has been understood as a question of devices, of platforms, of connectivity. These matter. But the real question is deeper. It is the question of whether the system can plan, teach, track, fund, and connect people to opportunity — at the speed and at the scale that the moment requires.

We will therefore rebuild the integrity of our data systems, beginning with the TVETMIS rebuild. We will expand the National Open Learning System. We will move decisively to introduce online TVET and CET offerings, so that learning is no longer a question of how far a young person can travel, but a question of what they wish to study. We will roll out digital career services that meet young people where they already are — on their phones, in their pockets, in their townships, in their villages. We will build curricula and partnerships in artificial intelligence, in data, in software, in analytics, and in cybersecurity. And we will engage the world’s leading technology companies as partners in the national skills effort.

A digitally transformed PSET system must know where learners are, what they study, whether they complete, whether they transition into work, and which sectors are absorbing them.

It must know — and it must act.

Priority Two — The Skills Revolution

The second priority is the Skills Revolution.

The President has used this phrase deliberately. A revolution is not an adjustment. It is a reordering. It is a break with what has not worked, and a commitment to what must.

The Skills Revolution rests on five practical pillars.

The first pillar is occupational qualifications — qualifications that lead to demonstrable competence in identifiable trades and occupations, recognised by industry and respected in the labour market.

The second pillar is workplace-integrated learning, so that no young South African finishes a qualification without first having stood in a place of work.

The third pillar is apprenticeships and artisan development — the backbone of every industrial economy on earth, and the lost middle of our own.

The fourth pillar is regional industrial skills compacts, which bring municipalities, provinces, employers, colleges and SETAs into a single skills plan tied to a specific economic geography.

The fifth pillar is employer participation — not as an audience to which we report, but as co-producers of the skills the economy requires.

To give this revolution traction, we have set firm targets.

SETAs will sign employer compacts with at least thirty per cent of employers in their sectors.

Seventy per cent of SETA service level agreements will be achieved.

Twenty-five WorldSkills employer partnerships will be established.

Sixty per cent of WorldSkills South Africa competitors will come from our public TVET colleges.

We will work across thirty skills areas — including two priority areas in the green economy.

And to those who say this is too much to ask of the private sector, I say this plainly:

The private sector cannot remain a spectator to skills development. Industry must become a co-producer of the skills it requires. The skills levy is not a tax. It is an investment. And investors expect a return.

Priority Three — The size and shape of the system

The third priority is the most strategic question before this portfolio. It is the question of size, and the question of shape.

How many university places do we need, and for what?

What kind of universities does South Africa require — research-intensive, comprehensive, technology-focused, regionally rooted?

What should TVET become — and how large must it grow?

How should CET colleges serve communities, adults, and the millions of young people who are neither in employment, nor in education, nor in training?

How should SETAs align to the sectors that will drive our growth?

And what is the correct balance between contact learning, blended learning, online learning, and workplace-based learning?

The National Development Plan targets remain ambitious — and they remain unmet. TVET enrolment is far below long-term national need. CET is structurally under-funded. Universities must remain financially sustainable while continuing to transform. NSFAS cannot be the only instrument of access. Colleges must grow — but they must grow with quality and with relevance.

Honourable Members,

The question is no longer only how large the system must become.

The question is what shape it must take — to meet the demands of a digital, green, industrialising and inclusive economy.

That work has begun.

Youth at the centre

Honourable Chairperson,

It would be possible to give a speech of this kind that spoke only of institutions, instruments and indicators. I will not give that speech.

The young people of South Africa are not the beneficiaries at the end of this system. They are the reason for the system.

Every rand of this Vote must be judged against a single question: does it expand the opportunities of the young?

We will expand Khetha career services. We will deepen Skills on Wheels so that career guidance reaches the villages, townships and small towns that have for too long been bypassed by every other arm of the state. We will strengthen workplace readiness programmes. We will invest in student support, in mental health services, in safety on our campuses, in gender-based violence prevention, in disability inclusion, and in student entrepreneurship.

Because the test of this Budget Vote is not whether the Department spends.

The test is whether a young person in Mitchells Plain, in Giyani, in Rustenburg, in Lusikisiki, in Kuruman, in Mdantsane, or in Soweto, can see — and can walk — a pathway from learning to livelihood.

That is the test.

That is the only test.

Governance and accountability

Honourable Members,

No skills revolution can be built on weak governance.

No digital transformation can rest on unreliable data.

No funding model can survive without accountability.

And no institution can claim autonomy without public responsibility.

We will therefore continue the work of stabilisation that we have begun. NSFAS remedial action will be implemented in full. Audit outcomes across our entities will move decisively toward unqualified opinions. Irregular expenditure must come down — and it will come down. SETA audit action plans will be implemented. Councils will be trained. Financial health reporting will be tightened. We will issue revised reporting regulations where the current framework is no longer fit for purpose. And pre-employment screening for senior management appointments will become the standard, not the exception.

I want to say something direct to the institutions in our system, and to those who lead them.

We will defend institutional autonomy.

But we will not confuse autonomy with impunity.

The public pays for this system. The public is entitled to know how their money is spent, how their children are taught, and what outcomes their investment produces.

The new compact

Honourable Chairperson,

The Skills Revolution will not be delivered by government alone. It will be delivered through a disciplined compact between the state, labour, business, institutions and communities.

Business must provide placements, apprenticeships, and curriculum input. My engagement with business leaders yesterday indicates that there is goodwill in the private sector. That goodwill must now be harnessed and marshalled for the Skills Revolution.

Labour must help shape decent work and the upskilling of those already in it.

Universities must deepen research and innovation, and produce the graduates and the knowledge our country requires.

TVET must become the recognised home of occupational excellence in South Africa.

CET must become the community platform for lifelong learning.

SETAs and the National Skills Fund must become catalytic, outcomes-driven instruments of national development.

And government — across departments, across spheres — must align its industrial, economic and skills strategies so that what we train for, the economy is ready to absorb.

This is the compact we will build. This is the compact this Vote begins to fund.

Closing

Honourable Chairperson,

This Budget Vote is my first as Minister of Higher Education and Training. I present it with a full appreciation of the scale of the task before us.

We inherit a system of great achievement and deep contradiction. It has opened doors for millions. It has not yet built enough bridges to work, to innovation, and to economic participation.

That system was built by hands that came before ours. It is entrusted to us. And it must be passed on stronger than we found it.

Our task is to build the bridges that remain.

To link digital transformation to the Skills Revolution.

To reshape the size and shape of the post-school system.

To place youth at the centre.

To govern with integrity.

To spend with purpose.

To partner with urgency.

And to ensure that education and training, in our country, become pathways to dignity, to productivity, and to freedom.

Fifty years ago, a generation of school children gave us a country in which we are free to learn.

Today, this Vote begins the work of ensuring that what we learn, sets us free.

I thank you.

I hereby table Budget Vote 17: Higher Education and Training, for the consideration of the House.”

Higher Education Media Services.

South Africa faces a baffling economic paradox. The country desperately needs financial investment to create jobs and build infrastructure, yet local businesses are currently sitting on two trillion rand in unspent cash reserves. Why is this money not moving, and what will it take to unlock it?

These critical questions shaped the recent Africa Dialogue Series, co-hosted by the University of the Free State (UFS) and the South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR).

Dr John Endres, Chief Executive of the IRR, delivered a presentation titled Taking the brakes off South Africa’s economy: The IRR Blueprint for Growth. The session unpacked the hard numbers behind the country’s stagnant economy and offered a practical guide to turning things around.

According to Prof Hussein Solomon, convenor of the Africa Dialogue Lecture Series, creating space for robust and open engagement on such issues is precisely why the platform was established. “The Africa Dialogue Lecture Series arose from a desperate need to create a neutral public space for people to engage on pressing topical issues,” he said.

The discussion directly supported the UFS commitment to driving responsible societal futures, highlighting that true social justice begins with a functioning, inclusive economy.

Understanding the missing trillion

To understand why South Africa is struggling, you must look at a metric called Gross Fixed Capital Formation. In simple terms, this is the money spent on physical, long-term assets like factories, machinery, roads, and power stations. When this number drops, building stops. When building stops, hiring stops.

Dr Endres pointed out that successful emerging markets reinvest about 30% of their Gross Domestic Product into these physical assets. South Africa falls dangerously short.

“Gross fixed capital formation in South Africa was 14.9% in 2023,” Dr Endres explained. “In 2024, it drops to 14.5%. In 2025, it drops further to 13.7%.”

To reach the 30% target set by the National Development Plan, South Africa needs to spend roughly R2 trillion a year. We currently spend half that, leaving a R1 trillion annual shortfall.

The crisis of confidence

The most frustrating aspect of this shortfall is that the capital already exists within the country. Dr Endres revealed the scale of unused private sector resources.

“South African corporates are sitting on cash reserves, effectively, of 1.8 trillion rand,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of money sitting in their bank accounts that they’re not using to invest in factories.”

If local companies have the funds to cover two years of the national investment gap, why are they holding back? The answer lies in a deep crisis of confidence. Businesses are reluctant to risk long-term capital in an environment marked by policy uncertainty and failing infrastructure.

This hesitation sends a powerful signal to foreign investors. When domestic firms are unwilling to invest, international capital reads the message clearly. The market is perceived as too risky.

Prof Solomon stressed that platforms like the Africa Dialogue Series play a vital role in interrogating these challenges openly. “Inviting speakers to present their views and be challenged is not endorsement,” he said. “No one who subscribes to academic freedom and free speech would support censoring others.”

The human cost of a stalled economy

Economic metrics can easily feel disconnected from everyday life, but the real-world consequences of low investment are devastating. Without new factories and businesses, the job market shrinks.

Dr Endres brought the conversation back to the human toll, specifically focusing on the youth. He noted that youth unemployment stood at a staggering 57% in the first quarter of 2025. Furthermore, almost 45% of all South Africans between the ages of 15 and 34 are not in employment, education, or training. Millions of young people are entirely locked out of the economy. Fixing the investment gap is not just about boosting corporate profits. It is about restoring dignity and providing a future for the next generation.

Unlocking the blueprint for growth

Despite the grim statistics, Dr Endres presented an optimistic path forward. If the government can implement specific, identifiable policies to improve the business environment, the financial floodgates will open. He cited estimates suggesting that a confident market could attract up to R10 trillion in global investment.

“You want a kind of situation where local and foreign investors are falling over themselves to get into South Africa as being the most attractive market,” said Dr Endres. He stressed that such an influx of capital would be utterly transformative for the nation.

The driving force behind this change will not come from the top down. It must come from the citizens. Dr Endres ended on a hopeful note regarding the power of the South African electorate.

“They are moderate people. They are sensible people. They are not crazy,” he said. “And I think for the political will to emerge and to be generated requires the pressure of ordinary South Africans expressed at the ballot box and through other mechanisms.”

By hosting the Africa Dialogue Series, the UFS continues to create spaces where these crucial economic realities are broken down and understood. Empowering citizens with this knowledge is the first step toward building a wealthier and more responsible society.

Story by Siqhamo Hlubi Jama was first published on the UFS Website.

©Higher Education Media Services.

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South Africa’s upcoming local government elections could place thousands of first-time voters in a difficult position. As political parties prepare for a heated campaign season ahead of the elections on 4 November, Grade 12 learners may find themselves choosing between the ballot box and the examination room.

The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and the Department of Basic Education (DBE) may once again have to navigate a crowded national calendar: the election date announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa coincides with the period traditionally reserved for the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations.

According to Dr Mabutho Shangase, senior lecturer in political studies and international relations at the North-West University (NWU), the overlap could affect voter turnout among young people, particularly those preparing to vote for the first time.

“The overlap between the election period and the NSC examinations has the potential to disrupt the schooling programme and adversely affect voter turnout among young people, particularly first-time voters,” says Dr Shangase.

Competing demands

Learners could face competing demands during a period already associated with pressure and uncertainty, he says. “They are required to balance the pressures of high-stakes examinations with the heightened political engagement and mobilisation typically associated with elections.”

Dr Shangase points to the 2021 local government elections as an example of how institutions previously adjusted timelines to avoid major disruptions during the Covid-19 pandemic. At the time, NSC examinations were moved earlier to October following coordination between the IEC and the DBE.

But the 2026 elections are unfolding under different conditions, with political tensions expected to intensify ahead of the vote.

“The prevailing political climate is expected to be highly charged, with the elections anticipated to serve as a significant moment under the Government of National Unity,” he says.

Issues such as unemployment, the Madlanga Commission and anti-immigration protests are likely to dominate public debate in the months leading to the elections. According to Dr Shangase, this environment could place additional strain on students trying to focus on academic performance.

To reduce the impact, he believes closer coordination between the IEC and education authorities will be necessary. Possible interventions could include expanded special voting opportunities, targeted voter education campaigns and logistical support near examination centres.

Not just a short-term problem

Dr Shangase warns that declining youth participation could carry long-term consequences for South Africa’s democracy.

“Low voter turnout poses a significant threat not only to the credibility of elections, but also to the broader process of democratic consolidation.”

South Africa’s voter turnout has steadily declined since 1994. The 2019 national elections recorded a turnout of 66.1% of registered voters, while the 2021 local government elections dropped to 45,86%.

Dr Shangase says continued disengagement among young voters could weaken confidence in democratic institutions over time.

“If a significant proportion of young voters are unable or unwilling to participate due to competing academic commitments, this trend may be further entrenched,” he concludes.

©Higher Education Media Services.

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By Dr Nasaret Ruswa

Teachers in South Africa are leaving the profession at an alarming rate, raising urgent questions about their working conditions. How can teaching be regarded as the “mother of all professions” when the system fails to adequately prepare and support those entering it?

Across South African classrooms, teachers are constrained in their ability to focus on what they were trained to do: teach despite the existence of policy frameworks intended to support them.

Although such frameworks, including the Integrated Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Education and Development and the New Teacher Induction Guidelines, exist, their implementation remains uneven. For many beginning teachers, support exists in principle but is rarely experienced in practice.

Alongside this, expectations continue to expand. Teachers are expected to fulfil multiple roles, including counsellors, social workers, administrators, mediators, and disciplinarians. While these responsibilities are acknowledged in the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) policy, the conditions required to support them are often absent.

In many public schools, classrooms can exceed 60 learners, with limited time per lesson. Under such conditions, it is unrealistic to expect a single teacher to manage behaviour, provide emotional support, complete administrative tasks, and deliver meaningful instruction. Instead, the system compels teachers to rush through content without deliberate attention to each learner.

Consequences for learners

This has direct consequences for learners. Repetition and dropout rates persist not because learners are unwilling to work, but because systemic conditions shape what is possible in the classroom.

When teaching is reduced to coverage rather than meaningful engagement, it raises critical questions about the quality of learning and helps explain persistent patterns of dropout and grade repetition across the South African education system.

How can quality education be expected when teachers are not adequately prepared and supported? These challenges are especially pronounced in under-resourced schools, particularly in rural and township communities shaped by apartheid-era conditions.

High levels of unemployment, poverty, and community violence are carried into classrooms, placing additional demands on teachers. Reports of violence in schools further highlight the risks associated with working in such environments.

Under these conditions, teaching is largely displaced by administrative demands and crisis management. What was once a profession grounded in purpose and passion is now, for many, associated with exhaustion and burnout. Teachers move through the curriculum rather than engaging meaningfully with learners, reducing teaching to delivery rather than interaction.

Reflecting on my own experience, I did not remain in the school system for even a year after qualifying as a teacher. The demanding and, at times, unsafe conditions I encountered, including in the schools where I grew up in Kimberley, compelled me to pursue further studies rather than remain in the profession.

My experience is not unique. Many beginning teachers enter with passion, only to leave before they are fully developed in their roles. The profession is losing its younger cohort, while experienced teachers remain until retirement. This raises important questions about the quality of education being produced.

Teachers cannot be everything at once

This is not a question of teachers lacking skill or commitment. It is a structural problem. In the absence of systematic induction systems, beginning teachers are expected to function as fully developed professionals without adequate support or guidance. In effect, they are expected to either “sink or swim” in complex, demanding school environments.

High attrition rates among early-career teachers suggest that many are sinking rather than being supported to develop and succeed. Teachers are burning out not because they cannot teach, but because they are expected to be more than what they were trained to be.

If we are serious about improving education in South Africa, we must rethink how teachers are supported. This requires manageable class sizes, reduced administrative burdens, and the formalised and effective implementation of induction for early-career teachers. Most importantly, it means recognising that teachers cannot be everything at once.

Teachers enter the profession to teach. Creating the conditions that enable them to do so effectively is not optional; it is essential for improving teacher retention and learner outcomes.

Dr Nasaret Ruswa, Lecturer: Department of Curriculum Studies and Higher Education, Faculty of Education, University of the Free State.

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©Higher Education Media Services.

For many people, a career in law still conjures up images of courtrooms, working on lengthy case files, litigation between opposing parties and steely glances at opposing counsel across the boardroom table, says Fiona Kaplan, Dean of the Faculty of Law at Emeris.

Advocacy and dispute resolution remain central to the profession, but the work of today’s legal practitioners increasingly extends far beyond traditional legal practice, she says.

Across South Africa’s economy, organisations are navigating a growing web of regulation, governance requirements and emerging legal questions tied to technology, finance and public policy. As a result, legal practitioners are increasingly called upon to advise businesses and help leaders make informed strategic decisions.

This shift has also prompted debate about how legal education prepares graduates for the realities of modern practice. A national review of the LLB qualification by the Council on Higher Education highlighted concerns that some programmes were too heavily focused on theoretical knowledge and recommended stronger emphasis on practical capability, ethical training and broader professional competencies.

Against this backdrop, private higher education providers have increasingly positioned themselves as alternative pathways into the profession. Emeris, for example, graduates more law students each year than any other higher education institution in South Africa, including public universities, with around 80% of its graduates’ entering employment within their first year after completing their studies.

Professor Kaplan, says this evolution reflects the changing expectations placed on legal professionals.

“Where legal practitioners were once primarily focused on interpreting legislation or litigation, they are now progressively asked to assist organisations in making decisions that sit at the intersection of law, business and society,” Kaplan explains. “They are increasingly becoming strategic advisors who help organisations navigate complex matters.”

What does modern legal practice look like?

While dispute resolution and courtroom advocacy remain an important part of the profession, much of today’s legal work takes place in advisory roles. Legal practitioners may assist companies with regulatory compliance and corporate governance, labour frameworks or, for instance, guidance with new legal questions arising from digital platforms, AI, data protection and evolving financial regulation.

“In fact, many legal practitioners work closely with executives or corporations, engineers, financial professionals and policy specialists responsible for developing and interpreting regulatory frameworks, to interpret how legal frameworks apply to real-world operations,” Kaplan adds.

“This reality means that legal practitioners are more and more expected to understand the industries they advise and not just the legal rules that apply to them.”

Preparing graduates for a changing profession

As the profession continues to evolve in this way, legal education is also expected to follow suit, preparing students for a wider range of career pathways while grounding them in the constitutional principles that underpin South Africa’s legal system.

“The role of legal experts is shifting, and so too are the careers they are able to pursue with qualifications such as a Bachelor of Arts in Law or a Bachelor of Commerce in Law and the Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree,” says Kaplan. “These programmes, particularly in the manner they are designed at Emeris, combine legal studies with broader disciplines such as business, psychology and communication, to help students understand the contexts in which law operates and better prepare them for a broader range of specialisations.”

Practical exposure to the profession is also becoming a key part of legal training. Kaplan says that Emeris students have access to simulated courtroom environments designed to mirror real legal proceedings, where they can practise courtroom etiquette, legal argumentation and trial preparation through both moot and mock court sessions.

“These simulations form part of a broader effort to equip students with the practical thinking and problem-solving skills expected in professional legal environments,” she says.

Students also have the opportunity to participate in one of five Emeris community law clinics that provide free legal assistance to members of the public who may otherwise struggle to access legal services.

In South Africa, where more than half of the population lives below the poverty line and eligibility for state-supported legal aid is limited by strict income thresholds, initiatives like these can help broaden access to justice and support for vulnerable communities.

She adds that, as Emeris students engage in community-focused learning that exposes them to the social role of law, they also come to learn the importance of access to justice and the protection of rights in South Africa’s constitutional democracy.

The legal profession is still fundamentally about protecting rights and advancing for justice, but the way that work is done is evolving. Future practitioners need to be as comfortable in communities and policy spaces as they are in formal legal settings, and that is a key focus in their legal studies,” she says.

Ultimately, a legal qualification opens more than a single career path and involves adopting a way of thinking that can be applied across a range of sectors and settings.

While the core purpose of the profession remains the protection of rights and the pursuit of justice, the environments in which legal practitioners operate are expanding into business, policy, technology and public interest contexts.

This requires graduates who can move beyond technical interpretation of the law and apply it in practical, problem-solving ways that respond to real-world complexity, whether in formal legal practice or in broader roles that support fairness, accountability and informed decision-making.

©Higher Education Media Services.

By Prof. Linda du Plessis, senior deputy vice-chancellor of the North-West University

• The tragedy of the NSFAS story is that it reflects more than an institutional crisis; it reflects a deeper tension in public leadership in South Africa.

• NSFAS has grown from a support mechanism into the dominant driver of higher education spending.

• The most disturbing dimension of the NSFAS crisis is the erosion of ethical leadership.

• NSFAS did not fail because of one decision, one leader or one moment. It failed because a series of leadership responsibilities were neglected.

South Africa’s National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) was conceived as one of the most powerful instruments of social justice in the democratic era: an engine to open university doors to students historically excluded by poverty.

Yet today, it stands as a case study not only in administrative failure, but in something far more troubling: a systemic failure of leadership. This was not inevitable. In fact, the seeds of the crisis were visible from the very beginning.

In 2016, amid the turbulence of the #FeesMustFall protests, then-President Jacob Zuma appointed a commission to assess the feasibility of free higher education. The Heher Commission carried out its work thoroughly, drawing on extensive financial modelling, policy analysis and stakeholder engagement.

Its conclusion was unequivocal: South Africa could not sustainably afford universal free higher education. Instead, it recommended a carefully balanced, cost-sharing model with targeted support for the poor, income-contingent loans for the “missing middle”, and contributions from those who could afford to pay.

The lesson here is stark: leadership begins with listening. Yet what followed was not the implementation of evidence-based policy, but a political decision that ignored the central findings of the very commission that had been established.

This is the first, and perhaps most important, leadership failure: when evidence is treated as advisory theatre rather than a guide to action, governance is hollowed out at its core.

From that moment onward, the system was set on an unstable trajectory. Policy ambition, while morally compelling, collided with fiscal reality. The Commission had warned that expanding higher education funding without a sustainable model would require massive increases in state spending and risk undermining quality and system viability. Despite this, implementation proceeded without a credible long-term financing framework.

Good leadership demands the courage to align ambition with reality. Promising what cannot be sustained is not visionary; it is irresponsible. The consequences are now visible in ballooning costs, persistent budgetary pressure and a system perpetually described as “unsustainable”.

In less than a decade, South Africa has quietly shifted from funding universities to funding students and, in doing so, NSFAS has grown from a support mechanism into the dominant driver of higher education spending.

This structural shift is reflected in the annual higher education budget, where direct subsidies to universities have grown modestly, at roughly inflation-level increases, while funding for NSFAS has doubled, rising from about R27 billion in 2019 to more than R54 billion today.

But poor policy choices alone do not explain what followed. The deeper problem lies in how those decisions were executed.

The rapid introduction of fee-free higher education created immediate pressure on institutions that lacked the systems, capacity and infrastructure to deliver at scale. NSFAS was suddenly expected not only to fund students, but also to manage complex processes, payments, accommodation and compliance at a level for which it had not been designed.

Reports have highlighted that the shift to a centralised “student-centred model” demanded capabilities the organisation simply did not possess.

Here lies a second leadership lesson: execution is strategy. Policies do not fail because they are poorly worded; they fail because systems are not ready. Leadership is not about announcing reform; it is about ensuring it can be implemented.

As pressure mounted, weaknesses that had long been present began to surface more clearly. Parliamentary oversight processes later described a “prolonged period of collapse in governance”, during which warning signs were visible but not acted upon.

Annual reports were delayed, audits were qualified, irregular expenditure could not be fully quantified, and internal controls proved inadequate.

No institution collapses overnight. Failure is cumulative. It grows quietly in the space where accountability is deferred and intervention postponed. Leadership failure, in this sense, is often not about what is done, but about what is left undone.

Perhaps the most disturbing dimension of the NSFAS crisis is the erosion of ethical leadership. Investigative reports have pointed to allegations of irregular procurement practices, conflicts of interest and blurred lines between decision-makers and service providers. Even where allegations remain contested, the pattern itself is deeply concerning.

Institutions do not operate in an ethical vacuum. Their culture reflects the values of those who lead them. When transparency weakens, governance boundaries blur and oversight fails to assert itself, the line between inefficiency and corruption becomes dangerously thin.

Equally concerning is how policy inconsistency has translated into real human cost. Decisions such as reducing accommodation allowances without adequate consultation or alignment with market realities contributed to a crisis in student housing, leaving many students unable to secure accommodation and, in extreme cases, vulnerable to exploitation.

This is a painful paradox: a policy designed to advance equity can, if poorly executed, entrench new forms of vulnerability. Leadership must be judged not only by intent, but by impact.

Underlying all of this is a final and fundamental lesson: sustainability is not a technical matter; it is a leadership discipline. Over time, NSFAS has grown into a massive funding instrument, serving hundreds of thousands of students and commanding tens of billions of rand annually.

Yet growth without control has introduced new risks: inconsistent data, payment failures and uncertainty about whether funds are reaching their intended beneficiaries in the most efficient and equitable way.

Sustainability requires discipline, prioritisation and difficult trade-offs. It requires leaders who are willing to say not only “what is possible”, but also “what is responsible”.

The tragedy of the NSFAS story is that it reflects more than an institutional crisis; it reflects a deeper tension in public leadership in South Africa. The desire to address historical injustice is both necessary and urgent.

But when that desire is disconnected from evidence, governance and accountability, it risks undermining the very institutions designed to deliver justice.

In the end, the lesson is clear.

NSFAS did not fail because of one decision, one leader or one moment. It failed because a series of leadership responsibilities were neglected: the responsibility to listen to evidence, to plan realistically, to implement carefully, to govern ethically and to act decisively when problems emerge. If there is any value in this failure, it is as a reminder that leadership is not measured by announcements, but by outcomes.

And the most difficult question of all remains: when we see the warning signs, who is willing to act?

Educational leaders must confront a difficult but necessary reality. While access to higher education, regardless of financial means, is both a moral and constitutional imperative, the current funding model is under increasing strain and is not sustainable.

Expanding access without strong governance, efficient administration and fiscal sustainability risks weakening the system itself. The challenge is not whether to support access, but how to fund it in ways that are both equitable and sustainable.

Communication in healthcare is an essential justice as the lack thereof can be the differentiator between wellbeing and suffering, life and death.

Communicative injustice combined with healthcare injustice in the Life Esidimeni tragedy was the subject of health sociologist Dr Qawekazi Maqabuka’s doctoral dissertation.

During Nelson Mandela University’s recent autumn graduation season, a visibly emotional Maqabuka crossed the stage to receive her doctoral degree from the Department of Sociology in the institution’s Faculty of Humanities.

The timing was perfect as in April, the National Prosecuting Authority confirmed its decision to institute criminal prosecution against the individuals responsible for the Life Esidimeni tragedy, following years of investigations and an inquest.

“It’s been ten long years since the Gauteng Department of Health (GDoH)

terminated its contract with the psychiatric care facility, Life Esidimeni, relocating some 1 700 mental healthcare patients from specialised facilities to unlicensed, illegal NGOs to save costs,” says Dr Maqabuka. This decision resulted in the deaths of over 140 patients, collective trauma and 44 patients still missing.

“In my dissertation I explore the concept of communicative justice by analysing how those responsible for the Esidimeni relocation ‘project’, as well as the service providers overseeing the NGOs, failed to communicate with or consult the families of the patients.

The families had no idea how to find out what was happening to their loved ones, nor were their rights to be involved in the care and well-being of their loved ones respected. Many families had to try and get information from security guards and staff at Life Esidimeni. This is communicative injustice to the extreme.”

Family member after family member testified about this during the arbitration that started in 2017, led by former Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke. Mrs Betha Molefe was one of them.

An excerpt from her testimony reads as follows: ‘There is nothing that I can say to the Government because I am traumatised as I speak…I’m against the way in which they operate …They turn their backs on us, they have nothing to do with us.

That shows that they were not taking care of our children. If they did care about our children, they could have come to us and shown that there was no deliberate intent on their part. They could have come and said ‘Please forgive us, it was not deliberate on our part’.”

Dr Maqabuka’s dissertation shows how even doctors and psychiatrists, who should have been part of the allocation and moving of patients, were not permitted to participate in the decision-making process.

This is again another form of communicative injustice, as proper healthcare dictates that experts in the situation should have been part of the planning and moving of the patients.

She further explains that the GDoH failed to conduct adequate assessments, ignored warnings from the experts, and placed cost-saving above the constitutional obligation to protect vulnerable individuals.

The Ombud Report highlights how the relocation decisions were made without due diligence or adherence to healthcare standards. This conduct by the GDoH is not only a case of systemic failure in healthcare, governance and accountability, it is a case study in communicative injustice.

Justice Moseneke described the NGOs as “death chambers” where patients deteriorated at a rapid rate, with many of them dying within weeks and months of the move. The deaths of the over 140 patients were caused by a combination of starvation, neglect and lack of medical care.

“I take the harm caused a step further,” says Dr Maqabuka. “The scope of communicative justice is not exhausted by what we owe to the living, but also requires us to focus on the relevance of the concept of ukulandwa komzimba, where African spiritual practices ensure the safe passage of dead souls to the afterlife.

This was severely breached to the extent that some of the bodies were buried in the backyards of the NGOs instead of being entrusted to their families who could be with the deceased, communicate with them, as is the practice, and reassure them that they were being taken home.”

Another act of communicative injustice she raises is that South Africa has 12 official languages but patients who cannot communicate in English often do not get the care they need. In addition, many of the Life Esidimeni patients were mental healthcare patients who needed their loved ones to communicate for them.

“People cannot always speak for themselves and we need to make sure that someone who cares for them can speak for them. Communication is at the heart of what makes us human, it is how we share and receive information. Communicative justice is therefore an essential justice,” Dr Maqabuka explains.

One of her PhD supervisors, Professor Nomalanga Mkhize, Director of the School of Governmental and Social Sciences at Nelson Mandela University, says: “Dr Maqabuka’s study gives a very nuanced and sensitive account of the key role communication plays in the recognition of our personhood and dignity, and raises how much more important communication is in the rights and humanity of those who are not able to speak for themselves.”

“The Life Esidimeni case made news headlines globally and it should have set a precedent for state accountability, ethical behaviour, care for people, human dignity and communicative justice,” Dr Maqabuka continues.

“And yet it is far from the only case where the most vulnerable in society are being treated badly by government departments in South Africa. The injustice continues.”

Another case she cites was first reported by Msindisi Fengu in the City Press on 24 March 2018, where Legal Aid SA, represented by senior Advocate Lila Crouse, had managed to avert a case similar to Life Esidimeni. In the legal case Frail care crisis collective vs MEC for social development, the

Eastern Cape MEC wanted to move 236 frail care and disabled patients from Lorraine Frail Care and Algoa Frail Care in the province to NGOs to reduce costs.

In June 2016, the department gave notice to the two frail care facilities of its intention to terminate the contract with the Life Healthcare Group which managed them, effective 31 December 2016. The families were only informed of the intended closure of the two centres on 19 November 2016.

“In 2026, state mental health facilities remain mismanaged, under-resourced and have yet again been investigated and censured by the current health ombud,” Dr Maqabuka continues. “The past has a way of repeating itself.”

The families of the Life Esidimeni patients have since called for transparency from the NPA, to be included in the process and to be communicated with about what is happening.

“We hope this is honoured. We need to witness proactive change from the government at frail care and mental healthcare facilities; we need to see care in action for the most vulnerable,” says Dr Maqabuka.

“What is the point of democracy if the most vulnerable in our society do not feel the true material reality of democracy and justice in action?”

©Higher Education Media Services.

Violent crime in South Africa is rampant, with the country frequently ranked as one of the most dangerous in the world, as well as among the most unsafe in Africa. Citizens are afraid, and justifiably so, adapting to crime as though it is no longer temporary, but permanent. This fear has for decades quietly been redesigning suburban South Africa.

Across the country, cities are being turned into defended zones as defensive living becomes the norm. Spiked palisade walls, mounted cameras and roaming private security firms are not just a common sight in the country’s suburbs; they are increasingly defining them.

According to Prof. Gideon van Riet from the North-West University’s (NWU) School for Government Studies, this fear of crime is not irrational, but barricaded homes are not addressing the issue. They are displacing it.

“Fear of crime in South Africa is not irrational. Violent crime is a lived reality for many, shaping how people think, move and protect themselves. Fear is reasonable. South Africa has a high crime rate.

“Crime is often violent, both inside and outside the non-continuous laager,” he explains, referring to the fragmented social boundaries that separate those with access to commercial security infrastructures from those without.

Yet, he argues that the way society interprets and responds to crime may be just as important as crime itself. “The narratives we choose to attach to crime, however, are something we can and should control more carefully and urgently.”

It is a difficult task as, it can be argued, many South Africans have institutionalised attitudes towards this disruptive pandemic. For many, crime is no longer an occasional concern, but a constant factor in how their daily lives are organised.

Routes are planned around perceived danger, certain streets are avoided after dark, and neighbourhood WhatsApp groups function as informal early-warning systems. Security becomes less of a precaution and more of a routine.

Fear begins to influence behaviour long before crime itself occurs. People gradually reorganise their lives around the possibility of victimhood, creating habits that become normalised over time.

• South Africans are no longer just living in suburbs. They are living in defended zones.

• High walls, cameras and private security may protect some South Africans, but they are not solving crime — they are displacing it onto more vulnerable communities.

• Crime in South Africa is no longer treated as temporary. Fear has become embedded into daily life, reshaping how people move, socialise and even perceive strangers.

• South Africa’s “suburban arms race” is turning cities into fragmented islands of protection, where access, exclusion and fear increasingly define urban life.

Cities are turning into fragmented protected zones

He further states that as fear becomes embedded into routine, urban space itself has changed. South African suburbs increasingly resemble fragmented islands of protection, noting how these security infrastructures create what he describes as a “non-continuous laager” — a patchwork of defended spaces rather than a single protected boundary.

“This means suburbs become divided into pockets of access and exclusion. Security infrastructures allow enough integration between those inside and outside the defended zone to maintain an elementary sense of legitimacy, but they also reinforce separation,” he explains.

Inequality and exclusion remain central drivers

While fear shapes behaviour, crime itself cannot be separated from deeper structural conditions. South Africa’s high levels of unemployment, inequality and social exclusion create environments where crime becomes more likely, even necessary for basic survival.

“Crime should not be viewed purely as an individual moral failing. Instead, it is often linked to economic frustration and limited access to opportunity. In contexts where symbols of success are highly visible, but legitimate means of achieving them remain limited, strain and resentment become powerful forces,” he says, pointing to inequality as a critical underlying driver — one that cannot be resolved through walls, alarms or armed response alone.

The unintended consequences of protection

The suburban arms race creates a difficult paradox. As homeowners invest in stronger security, crime is not necessarily eliminated; it may simply move elsewhere.

Van Riet warns that security upgrades can unintentionally redistribute vulnerability. Homes protected by multiple layers of expensive security infrastructure become harder targets, pushing criminal activity towards areas with fewer resources and weaker protection.

“The problem of crime is not resolved. Instead, it is merely moved to those with less access to relatively effective security infrastructures.”

The effects of fear extend beyond architecture and security spending. They also reshape how communities interact, who belongs in certain spaces, and how strangers are perceived.

Prof. van Riet says that suspicion often becomes tied to appearance, movement or perceived belonging.

“People who appear ‘out of place’ may increasingly be viewed as threats rather than fellow residents. This reshaping of public space has wider implications for trust, social cohesion and the shared experience of city life.”

Fear may be reasonable, but its consequences are not neutral

He also makes a distinction between fear itself and what fear produces. While concern about violent crime is understandable, the long-term systems built around fear can deepen fragmentation.

“The growth of private security, surveillance and fortified suburban life may create short-term reassurance, but it also risks reinforcing division. Again, fear is reasonable, but the narratives and structures that grow around fear deserve closer scrutiny.”

What would change look like?

If crime is rooted partly in exclusion and inequality, then long-term solutions require more than individual protection. Prof. van Riet suggests that reducing fear sustainably depends on building stronger social cohesion, improving access to economic opportunity and addressing deep structural divides.

“Crime should be understood as a shared concern rather than a problem divided along class, geography or identity. Greater empathy and support for shared concerns across lines of division are required,” he says, “so that we may one day finally relegate the concept of the laager to the history books.”

The answer to South Africa’s suburban fortifications, which insulate rather than address the issue of crime, is not a call to arms, but a call to understanding. Time will tell which one is heard.

©Higher Education Media Services.

Every year, the South African financial services sector pours hundreds of millions of Rands into consumer financial education. Between mandatory industry contributions and private corporate wellness initiatives, the investment is massive.

Yet, if one looks at the hard data, it is difficult to see a true return on this investment. Which raises a critical question: what impact are we measuring?

Despite this influx of education interventions, outcomes aren’t improving where it matters most:

• Negative Savings: In 2025, the South African household savings rate hit -1.2%. Which means that South Africans are spending more than they earn, while the global average sits near 10%.

• The Gambling Surge: Over R1 trillion spent on online gambling in a single year.

• The Retirement Gap: Retirement outcomes remain stagnant, and even entrepreneurial activity is in decline.

While high inflation and low growth are structural hurdles, we have to ask ourselves: Why isn’t the current approach to financial education translating into better behaviour?

At the Prescient Foundation, we realised that teaching “investment products” to people who are still grappling with the basics is like teaching calculus to someone who hasn’t mastered addition. Instead, our approach starts with empowering people to make smarter everyday spending decisions before shifting the focus to savings.

Shifting the Focus: Decision, Direction and Discipline

In partnership with the School of Savings South Africa, we have rolled out a different kind of initiative across six secondary schools in KwaZulu-Natal. These schools are a combination of fee and non-fee paying schools, but are all broadly defined as operating in communities in need.

Instead of starting with complex asset classes, the initiative focuses on the psychology of the “Three Ds”: Decision, Direction and Discipline. The 2025 cohort of 724 students revealed a startling reality:

• 82% receive pocket money, yet 77% do not have a bank account.

• Only half track their monthly spending.

• 74% noted that they learn about saving at school, yet the “how-to” remains elusive.

In many South African households, open discussions about money management are rare. We also cannot ignore the reality of child-headed households, where the traditional “financial role model” simply doesn’t exist.

Our differentiator is a focus on wise spending rather than just “investments”. Every learner receives a workbook and a money box to save just R1 a day. It’s a small, consistent step that proves financial independence isn’t about how much you start with; it’s about the habit of delayed gratification.

The Ripple Effect: From R1 a day to rewriting the future

The results of this 18-month programme are proving that financial literacy is about more than just money. It’s about confidence, mindset and choices for students – especially young women - in schools.

We are seeing an incredible anecdotal shift: students engaged in these initiatives are gaining the confidence to tackle tougher academic subjects.

These students aren’t just learning to save; they are becoming role models for their peers and, crucially, for their parents. They are proving that your economic circumstances do not have to dictate your financial destiny.

If we want to fix South Africa’s relationship with money, we have to stop treating financial literacy as a “crash course” for adults and start treating it as a foundational language for our youth.

True change won’t come from explaining the nuances of the stock market to someone in debt; it comes from teaching a Grade 10 learner the power of money. By the time a student reaches Grade 12, the habit of discipline should already be part of their DNA.

We believe that by focusing on the fundamentals - Decision, Direction and Discipline - we aren’t just teaching kids how to save; we are equipping them to rewrite their own futures. This is an opportunity to rethink financial literacy – not as a standalone obligation, but as a foundational subject with a meaningful place in the South African curriculum.

©Higher Education Media Services.

By Jed da Silva

South Africans don’t need a quarterly report to feel the cost-of-living crisis. They feel it at the till. The question is why our data systems are still catching up months after households have already adapted, and what we lose in that delay.

South Africa’s official Consumer Price Index averaged 3.2% in 2025, the lowest rate in 21 years. On paper, that suggests relief. In practice, it obscures a more troubling signal. When you look at what consumers are actually putting in their baskets, not just how prices are moving in aggregate, but what households are choosing to buy or quietly leaving on the shelf, the picture becomes far less reassuring.

Households are not buying less because prices have fallen. They are buying less because they cannot afford to buy more.

That gap (between what the headline number says and what behaviour reveals) is the real story.

The blind spot in our economic lens

Traditional inflation metrics are structurally backward-looking. By the time CPI data is published, households have already made their adjustments: switching brands, splitting purchases across cheaper stores, quietly removing items from the basket altogether. The statistic confirms what families have already lived through.

The problem is compounded by where our data comes from and how frequently it is updated and shared. South Africa’s formal retail sector accounts for roughly 57% of FMCG sales by value. The remaining 43% flows through informal traders, township spaza shops, and neighbourhood convenience stores. Yet the transactions in those environments are almost entirely invisible to the datasets used to guide policy and business decisions.

This is not a minor data gap. The informal FMCG trade was valued at R207 billion by the end of 2024, and spaza shops outgrew supermarket chains in 2025. We are making decisions about the consumer economy while blind to nearly half of where South Africans actually spend.

What real-time data reveals

When you look across the full retail landscape (formal and informal), the picture sharpens considerably. Consumers are fragmenting their purchases across multiple retailers to chase price differences. Entire product categories are quietly disappearing from baskets. Brand loyalty is collapsing under financial pressure. And these shifts are happening in weeks, not quarters.

The FNB/BER Consumer Confidence Index dropped to -13 in Q3 2025, and a separate study found 42% of South Africans are constantly worried about their finances, with 29% reporting that money stress is harming their mental health. These are not abstract economic signals. They are a population under sustained pressure, and our measurement systems are far too slow to respond in time.

Fintech offers a realistic, real-time economic buffer

This is where the conversation needs to shift. Financial technology is too often discussed in terms of convenience. Its more powerful, and rather underutilised role, is that of a real-time economic buffer. South African consumers completed over 118 card transactions per person in 2025, with total card volume reaching R2.9 trillion. The data infrastructure exists; what’s missing is the will to use it as a tool for household resilience, not just commercial insight.

Retail-agnostic data systems, used across formal and informal societal segments, can detect financial stress as it emerges, not months after the fact. That real-time visibility creates an opportunity: fintech platforms can return immediate value to consumers through micro-rewards, airtime, or digital incentives linked to everyday purchases, precisely when household budgets are under the most pressure.

At scale, these small buffers matter enormously. In emerging markets, resilience is built on thin margins, and when those margins disappear, vulnerability to economic shocks rises sharply.

The opportunity South Africa cannot afford to miss

South Africa has a rare combination of assets: a sophisticated fintech ecosystem, a highly diverse retail landscape, and widespread mobile adoption. That combination positions us to pioneer models and technical solutions where consumer data and financial value can actually interact in real time. This would help us bridge the gap between informal and formal retail: enabling faster, more targeted responses to consumers under economic stress.

The future of financial inclusion will not be built on lagging indicators. It will be built on systems that see what is happening now and act on it. The data is already there, in every receipt, every basket, every purchase quietly removed from a shopping list.

We just need to start listening to it in real time.

Jed da Silva is a technology entrepreneur focused on consumer apps combining entertainment, rewards, and data-driven engagement.

©Higher Education Media Services.

South Africa is a country where the poor wait - and die!

Those belonging to the privileged few - whose parents or children will never set foot in a public hospital - will not truly understand the danger faced by the poor. Their children will never be turned away from school, just because the classes are overcrowded with children of poor migrants.

In these healthcare facilities, people risk dying prematurely because access to life-saving treatment like chemotherapy or dialysis is delayed by long queues, staff shortages, or a lack of critical medication.

When it comes to access to basic education, children spend months waiting for a seat in a classroom, while officials struggle to find places in overcrowded schools. This crisis has been building up over time, but no one is listening.

Here is my story.

A compatriot and a man of honour recently passed away in a public hospital while waiting for life-saving dialysis. There was no national outrage. Just quiet acceptance from family, friends, and colleagues that such tragedies have become normal in South Africa.

He was a father and a husband. He was also someone who had once risked his life fighting for the rights of the poor during apartheid, believing that one day basic human rights- including access to healthcare - would be available to all.

Yet, in his hour of need, he was denied a life-saving procedure. I will not mention his name out of respect for his family. But this man, who endured detention and hardship in pursuit of justice - lost his life waiting in a system that could not accommodate him.

In my view, he died twice. The first time was under apartheid, when he was detained and dehumanised for fighting for freedom. The second was in a democratic South Africa, in a hospital where the waiting list for treatment was simply too long.

Imagine being told: we know what is wrong, and we know how to treat it, but there are too many people ahead of you. Some are locals but many come from poor countries. Some could be hardened criminals or terrorists, but we cannot turn them away because they were first in the queue.

South Africa’s public healthcare system is under severe strain. It serves the majority of the population, yet struggles with limited resources, staff shortages, and growing demand from migrants, some illegal and undocumented. At the same time, the country faces a deep economic crisis.

The unemployment rate sits at more than 30% while youth unemployment exceeds 45%, and the figure is even higher among younger age groups. Yet recently we have had 1000 medical doctors marching on our streets because they couldn’t find work in public hospitals where foreign doctors have found employment quite easily.

The broader crisis where millions of poor people are scrambling for limited access to hospitals and clinics places enormous pressure on public services and health care workers.

This is the reality the poor are navigating every day. And yet, when communities raise concerns about overcrowded clinics, overburdened schools, and shrinking opportunities, they are quickly dismissed, labelled xenophobic, or ignored. Within this context, immigration - particularly undocumented migration - has become a flashpoint in public debate.

Many communities experience overcrowded clinics, schools, and housing, and attribute part of this strain to an influx of people seeking opportunities in South Africa.

Estimates suggest that immigrants make up about 5% of the population, although the number of undocumented migrants is uncertain, often debated by those who wish to paint South Africans as xenophobes who are exaggerating the fact that jobs that should be reserved for them, are taken by foreigners without special skills.

But those who have experienced a phenomenal growth in the number of communities occupied by migrants throughout South African cities and villages, speak of numbers far exceeding the official 4 million reported in mainstream media.

What is clear is that population growth, regardless of the source, adds pressure to already stretched systems. It is worse when this growth is not known and therefore, not documented by governments who should know better.

Though it is equally important to acknowledge that South Africa’s challenges did not begin with migration, the influx of poor people especially from the continent, has put an additional burden on our fiscus and Finance Minister Enoch Godongwane said so recently.

Structural issues, slow economic growth, inequality, governance failures, and a struggling public sector are widely recognised as the primary drivers of unemployment and service delivery breakdowns. In overcrowded hospitals, someone is always ahead in the queue. And for the person who does not make it in time, the reasons matter less than the outcome.

This is where the real injustice lies: the poorest South Africans are left to compete with poor immigrants for limited resources in systems that are already failing them.

When systems are not managed, pressure builds and it is the poorest who feel it first. Still, for those at the frontline of these struggles, these distinctions can feel academic, especially when faced with criminality from faceless people, like the Somalians and Pakistani mafia targeting local spaza shop owners for operating what they have now declared their turf.

The 30 innocent children who died from food purchased from Somalian and Pakistani-ran spaza shops, were not children of the affluent and political elites of this country. They were children from the black (African) townships hence there was never an outcry and the pain was felt only by their families and their communities.

Strangely, nobody has ever been prosecuted for this massacre of our young. Drugs have destroyed the lives of thousands of young people and many households are disintegrating because of drug abuse that go hand-in-hand with human trafficking that goes unchecked because of our porous borders.

At the same time, many of those with the loudest voices in public debates are not directly affected. They rely on private healthcare, private education, and networks that shield them from the realities faced by the majority.

When things go wrong, the poor pay first.

Seasoned journalist Zingisa Mkhuma is editor of www.ednews.africa.

©Higher Education Media Services.

Joe Latakgomo, a giant of black journalism in South Africa, and founding editor of The Sowetan newspaper, who died recently, was one of those special big-view journalists who not only saw journalism as uncovering the truth, holding power accountable, but who were also active community-builders, who were involved in strengthening community civic life, civic institutions and civic engagement, outside journalism.

Journalism for Latakgomo, at the journalistic coalface of the fight against apartheid, was about exposing the truth, bringing out the stories of the marginalised, holding the institutions of power, whether government, business, traditional or religious groups, and the liberation movements such as the African National Congress accountable. However, for Latakgomo, journalism was also about building, educating communities, and changing readers' mindsets from black-and-white village- or township-focused mindsets to more expansive, national and global outlooks.

Functioning and cohesive democracies, societies, and communities require healthy civic life, non-state civic institutions within communities, and active engagement in civic life and civic institutions by ordinary citizens. Civic institutions include local sports, cultural, or community clubs, volunteer service organisations, school governing boards, and organisations that raise funds for local community causes. In the liberation or anti-colonial struggles, civic institutions are often turned by political activists into fronts to take on the autocratic apartheid or colonial regimes. These institutions then lose their traditional civic role, prompting many non-political activists to withdraw and further weakening them.

Latakgomo was also a strong advocate for instilling positive moral values among individuals and communities, particularly those previously oppressed, including respect for others, self-esteem, social justice, and non-violence. Such values are critical to the healthy social fabric of previously disadvantaged individuals and communities and to fostering harmoniously functioning communities and societies. These values guide individuals to interact and behave in healthy ways in schools, workplaces, interpersonal relations across race, colour, and gender, and in any given situation or circumstance.

Such core values are usually inculcated in families. Apartheid, whether through trauma, the migrant mine worker system, its violence, broke disadvantaged communities’ families. Schools, traditional and religious structures, also foster moral values. During apartheid, schools of previously disadvantaged communities became battlefields in the fight against apartheid; some traditional and religious structures also became corrupted.

Broken families, collapsing schools and captured traditional and religious structures cannot infuse positive values in children. Liberation movements, in their fighting of oppressed apartheid, colonial or other authoritarian regimes, often also have to use violence, promote the defiance of inherited social institutions of the oppressed individuals and communities, challenge the received moral values among oppressed communities, and in some instances also rupture existing core moral values.

Journalism could potentially educate, promote and socialise good moral values when other social institutions fail. Latakgomo believed in journalism’s responsibility to do this.

Societies cannot prosper, be cohesive, or stabilise following long liberation or revolutionary struggles, unless there are healthy, diverse, non-state civic institutions, which are functioning, and positive moral values, including respect for others, self-esteem, social justice and non-violence, are fostered among individuals and communities from previously oppressed communities.

He was involved in building the community of his hometown, Atteridgeville, and helped found the Pretoria Jets softball club, with fellow softball aficionados Jerome Sachane, Joe Dau, and Elliot Makhaya.

Latakgomo was the founding editor of The Sowetan newspaper in 1981 and died on 22 February 2026.

Latakgomo was an institution builder. He built The Sowetan as an institution. Building mission-critical institutions that can live on for generations, beyond one’s own life, is critical in developing countries. Since the end of colonialism, many developing and African countries have failed because they have been unable to create lasting institutions.

Institutions are often destroyed, rather than established, preserved or built. Societies fail if they lack enough institution-builder leaders, such as Latakgomo.

Before the Sowetan, he was a senior journalist at The World and Weekend World, which were banned by the apartheid government, and also Assistant Editor at the Post and Sunday Post.

When the June 16 student uprisings exploded in Soweto, he was acting editor of The World newspaper, while the editor, Percy Qoboza, was on a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.

The World newspaper was among the first to bring the news of the Soweto uprising to the outside world. The World’s team included Willie Bokala, Duma Ndlovu, Sophie Tema and photographer Sam Nzima.

Latakgomo was deputy to editor Percy Qoboza.

Jovial Rantao, the former editor of the Sunday Independent, wrote that: “It was at The World that he found himself standing alongside one of South Africa’s most towering figures in the press, Percy Qoboza. To serve as deputy to a legend requires a particular kind of strength – not the strength that competes, but the strength that complements. Latakgomo had that strength in abundance.”

“While Qoboza thundered with prophetic courage, Latakgomo held the ground, kept the ship steady, and ensured that the journalism they produced together was worthy of the dangerous times that demanded it”.

The apartheid government banned The World in 1977. Out of the ashes of the banned The World, The Sowetan was launched.

He mentored three generations of black journalists – many of whom started in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

When I arrived at The Sowetan as the new generation leadership, I would often feel, almost viscerally, the weight of the history of the Sowetan newspaper greats, like Latakgomo and Aggrey Klaaste. Their portraits, including that of Qoboza, hung against the walls of the old 61 Commando Road, Industria, newsroom of the Sowetan, looked out at the newsroom.

He was born in Atteridgeville, Pretoria, on 13 January 1948, the year the National Party came to power and introduced apartheid. He started as a freelance reporter before securing a job at The World newspaper in 1967. He started as a sportswriter.

Latakgomo had many interests, read widely and travelled widely, among the basic requirements for good journalism.

He also loved soccer. His book, on the history of South African soccer, Mzansi Magic, Struggle, Betrayal & Glory: The Story of South African Soccer, was published in 2010.

The South African Football Association awarded him a lifetime achievement award for his long-standing contributions to the development of soccer in South Africa. He was inducted into the SAB Sports Journalists Hall of Fame in 2009.

He was reserved, but warm, with a quiet, dignified personal presence. Although very influential, he was not as widely known as many of his contemporaries, such as Aggrey Klaaste.

After his editorship at Sowetan and his career at ‘black’ newspapers, he was recruited by the then-white liberal Argus group (now Independent Newspapers) as Assistant Editor of Johannesburg Star and of the Argus Africa News Service.

In the post-1994 period, he was Public Editor at Times Media, ensuring that journalists' stories were fair to those they reported on.

He served as Public Advocate at the Press Council of South Africa between 2018 and 2020. He wrote the text for Peter Magubane’s 1996 photographic commemoration, June 16, Never, Never Again.

Abbey Makoe, a former journalist at The Star, wrote: “Across newsrooms, he represented integrity. Young and old, he interacted with the editorial staff with dignified sincerity that was genuine”.

Makoe wrote that Latakgomo, when joining the Star, was a “bridge between journalism during apartheid and the transition into the new society we have today”.

William Gumede is a former Deputy Editor at The Sowetan and the author of the bestselling Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times (Tafelberg).

©Higher Education Media Services.

Thembalethu Seyisi is the Head of Law Reform, Advocacy and Institutional Partnerships at SU. He is completing a master’s degree that examines the role of the South African Human Rights Commission in championing social justice. Seyisi was recently selected as one of BPM Global 100 leading black professionals for 2025.

What do you see as the most significant threats to democracy today?

The most profound and underappreciated threat to democracy today is the structural dependency of the Global South on the Global North for financial survival. This dependency is engineered and maintained through the lending architecture of institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Their debt conditionalities attach strings of austerity, privatisation, and deregulation to every loan, systematically constraining the policy space of borrowing nations. The result is that governments in the Global South, however democratically elected, are effectively unable to govern in the interests of their own people. Sovereignty becomes ceremonial.

For South Africa, this is a particularly acute tension. We are not simply a democracy, we are a constitutional democracy, bound by one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. Our constitution does not merely protect political rights; it enshrines socio-economic rights: access to healthcare, housing, food, water, education, and social security.

These are justiciable rights, meaning citizens can and do take the state to court to enforce them. This is a remarkable democratic foundation. Yet the IMF’s structural adjustment logic, and the broader financial architecture that keeps South Africa tethered to debt markets and investor sentiment, routinely forces fiscal policy choices that directly undermine the realisation of those constitutional rights.

One example is the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant that Treasury has not turned into a Basic Income Grant. You cannot have a thriving constitutional democracy and a structurally impoverished citizenry at the same time. The two are in permanent conflict.

The Global South, including South Africa, is trapped in a cycle of systematically manufactured poverty – not through the failure of democracy itself, but through an international economic order that punishes democratic governments for prioritising their people over their creditors. Until that architecture is challenged and transformed, democracy in the Global South will remain aspirational rather than lived.

What happens when trust in democracy erodes, and how can it be rebuilt in polarised and unequal societies?

Trust does not erode in a vacuum or at the whim of one single instance. It erodes over time as institutions fail to deliver on their mandate and promises. In the South African context, that promise is constitutional: the promise of social justice – meaning fairness to all experienced through the equal enjoyment of rights by all people.

The declining trust we are witnessing in government and in political parties is justified. It is the response of a citizenry that has been promised a great deal and delivered very little. When millions of South Africans wake up daily without clean water, adequate housing, quality education or safety, they are not experiencing a political inconvenience. They are experiencing a democratic betrayal.

Rebuilding trust, therefore, will not be or a matter of ‘better’ leadership in polarised countries. It requires collective leadership where elected leaders practice power with rather than power over.

In a deeply unequal societies like ours, this means that democratic institutions and their leadership will regain the trust of the people once their lives are improving and the gap between those who enjoy all the rights and those who are effectively excluded from them is narrowing. The (re)creation of a fair society is therefore crucial.

Young people are often described as disengaged from formal politics, yet active in social movements. How do you interpret this?

The framing of youth as “disengaged” is both patronising and analytically wrong. Young people are not disengaged from democracy — they are disengaged from the particular institutional forms that have consistently failed them.

When the formal political system reproduces inequality, captures public resources and insulates itself from accountability, young people seek more responsive vehicles for change.

Social movements are not a departure from democracy; they are democracy in its most direct expression. Movements like #FeesMustFall, #MeToo, #JusticeFor… (depending on who was wronged or killed at the time) and service delivery protests are not symptoms of democratic failure.

They are mechanisms of democratic pressure. They shine a light on the most pressing issues of our time – inequality, exclusion, and the gap between constitutional promises and lived reality – in ways that formal political processes are too slow, too captured or too timid to do.

What this tells us about the future of democratic participation is that participation itself must be reimagined. Democracy cannot be reduced to a ballot cast every five years.

It must become a living, continuous practice embedded in communities, workplaces, schools, and public spaces. Young people are already building that practice.

The question is whether formal institutions will adapt to meet them or continue to wonder why the youth have “lost faith”.

What gives you hope for the future of democracy?

My hope is grounded in the growing global movement towards a wellbeing economy – an alternative economic framework that places human dignity, ecological sustainability, and genuine quality of life at the centre of policy, rather than GDP growth or debt servicing.

In South Africa, and particularly here at Centre for Social Justice, this work is taking root in meaningful ways. Having developed the Social Justice Impact Assessment Matrix (SIAM), we are subjecting policies, including fiscal policies, to a tool that simulates the future with the idea being to bring to light and inform policy makers whether the policy will have unintended consequences and therefore exacerbate inequality, poverty, unemployment and hunger.

This is not an abstract academic exercise but work that takes seriously our constitutional commitments and our history of exclusion.

Equally inspiring is the Globus People’s Meet partnership with Denmark with the hope of hosting a People’s Meet in South Africa – a growing platform for voices to share strategies and build solidarity across borders.

Democracy is not dying. It is being reimagined from the ground up, by “we, the people” as it was always meant to be.

Each April, South Africa marks Freedom Day on 27 April, commemorating the country’s first democratic elections in 1994 – a defining moment that continues to shape its constitutional order. Against this backdrop, thought leaders at Stellenbosch University (SU), whose work engages questions of governance, rights and accountability, reflect on the state of democracy.This article was first published on SU Website.

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Extract from Predatory Welfare: How Finance Capital Profiteers from Social Grants, by Erin Torkelson in partnership with right-wing, economic justice NGO Black Sash.

Publisher: Jacana Media: The book is the culmination of seven years of fieldwork, activism, grant payment queue volunteering and petitioning the courts, writes, Torkelson, saying he unravels the insidious ways grant beneficiaries, who are most often black women, are manipulated by lenders into leveraging their grants for loans, funeral policies, airtime deductions and similar products pushing them into cycles of debt.

Torkelson asks: “How does a government-sponsored, flagship anti-poverty programme became entangled with predatory finance?”.

Extract: Lerato

In Predatory Welfare: How Finance Capital Profiteers from Social Grants (Jacana 2026), Erin Torkelson probes the political technologies, financial infrastructures and lived experiences of social welfare that have been packaged under the banner of “cash transfer” or “social grants” in South Africa.

She focuses on the gendered, racialized and generational dimensions of debt to explore the reworkings of racial capitalism and the private profit-making that is constitutive of a public state programme.

While cash transfers have been championed by an array of influential policy makers and academics, in recent years, they have changed material form. Despite the name, most cash transfers are no longer distributed as cash, but are digital payments linked to the sale of financial products and services. In this excerpt, Torkelson describes what happened to Lerato, when her daughter’s social grant was transformed into debts for loans, airtime, electricity, and funeral insurance.

Twenty-six cents. That was all that was left in Lerato’s bank account when she went to collect her daughter’s child support grant (cgs) at the Site B Community Hall in Khayelitsha on October 3, 2016. Instead of cash, Lerato clutched a receipt as if her life depended on it. This slip of paper was the only thing that offered some explanation as to why she hadn’t received a cash transfer payment for her daughter that month.

I accompanied Bongiwe Rhadebe, a Black Sash paralegal, to find out how many people had not received their payments that morning.

Bongiwe and I scanned the quiet bustle of people making their way to the front of the queue. Everyone in the auditorium was Black (besides me) and most were women (like me). Some people were elderly or disabled. Some had babies bound to their backs or toddlers playing at their knees.

Their collective goal was to reach one of three Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) technicians that were contracted by the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) to distribute cash transfers. Each technician stood behind a folding table, on which sat an aluminum briefcase containing a computer, microphone, biometric scanner, card reader, and cash box.

The three CPS technicians slotted grantees’ cards into their card readers and guided grantees’ thumbs onto their biometric scanners. Their machines sprang to life and printed out receipts stating the amount of money each person should receive. The technicians hurriedly counted out cash for the grantees, who tucked it away in their bras or purses before leaving the hall.

While many people got their cash transfers without difficulty, Lerato did not. When she complained to the CPS manager, he directed her to a shorter queue of people waiting to speak to a (SASSA) official. The official was on a two-hour lunch break, and the queue had ground to a halt.

When I sat down next to Lerato, she pushed her receipt into my hand, asking me to attend to its contents. The technician should have handed Lerato R350 —the amount of one child support grant. But, since his machine reported that her account was nearly empty, she was turned away with nothing. Her receipt stated that at 8:54 a.m. R350 was deposited in her account. At the same time, a nearly identical sum of money was removed from her account as “deductions” for airtime, electricity, a funeral policy, a loan repayment, and bank fees.

Lerato had been staring at similar receipts for months. This particular receipt showed that she had purchased electricity and airtime on credit through Umoya Manje (one of CPS’s sister companies), but none of those products had been delivered to her electricity meter or mobile phone.

It showed that she had an automatic debit order for a funeral policy through Smartlife (another one of CPS’s sister companies), but she did not remember signing up for that. It also said that she was repaying a loan from Moneyline (another one of CPS’s sister companies). Lerato acknowledged this debt, explaining that with all the other deductions she needed to borrow money to cover her household shortages.

While I had met plenty of people with deductions before, Lerato’s R0.26 was the smallest account balance I had seen at the time. I asked Bongiwe to help me piece together the timeline of these deductions.

Lerato told us that the deductions started near the beginning of the year in the Eastern Cape. She and her daughter, Angel, had gone to visit her mother in Cala at Christmas time. After their holiday, Lerato returned to Cape Town to start a temporary job, while Angel stayed behind in her grandmother’s care.

Lerato left her cash transfer card with her mother to assist with household expenses. After a few months, Lerato’s mother called to report that the grant money was “short,” but it was only after Angel returned to Cape Town that Lerato experienced these deductions herself.

Lerato’s receipt showed that she had received and spent her daughter’s grant at the very same moment. Yet, the money was rerouted as digital payments for immaterial financial products long before she could make any of the material monthly purchases needed to care for her child. While this slip seemed to present a sort of calculative rationality, Lerato strongly disagreed with what it alleged.

Lerato’s experience jarred with typical narratives about cash transfers. For several decades, cash transfers have been touted as “a quiet revolution” in development. Silicon Valley techies, World Bank bureaucrats, and anthropologists of Southern Africa have hoped that cash transfers could have a stronger impact on poverty than more traditional development interventions—such as public works projects like dams or highways—which have often been characterized as top-down and inappropriate.

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Around the world, there has been widespread agreement that regular tranches of cash can enable recipients to decide what their needs are and how best to meet them, pulling themselves out of poverty by their own initiative.

While few advocates would say that they constitute a sufficient response to poverty on their own, many believe they are one of the best poverty relief tools we have. Because cash transfers have achieved a sort of common sense, development professionals and policymakers have steadily pushed to expand such programs worldwide.

In line with this trend, South Africa’s cash transfer program—locally referred to as the social grant program—has been hailed as an unquestionable success. South Africa spends a higher percentage of its GDP on cash transfers than nearly any other country in the developing world, at times outstripping even Brazil and India.

Currently, cash transfers comprise the third largest percentage of the national budget (R286 billion), behind debt servicing (R340.5 billion) and education (R309.5 billion) and ahead of health care (R259.2 billion).

The government provides unconditional, means-tested grants for children under eighteen, adults over sixty, people with disabilities, and since COVID-19, unemployed people between eighteen and fifty-nine. At present, these grants directly support around twenty-six million citizens (46 percent of the population), and they are a vitally important source of income for nearly half of all households.

Many studies have shown that cash transfers have positive effects on reducing poverty, decreasing childhood malnutrition, improving educational outcomes, and stimulating the economy.

When I started this project, I thought I knew what cash transfers were and what they did. However, the longer I worked with recipients, the more my experiences stood awkwardly in relation to such optimistic analyses.

I found that there were no guarantees that social grants would ease the financial burdens of poor households, and as Lerato’s receipt showed, when combined with debts, it seemed just as likely that they would not.

Although most of what I had read touted cash transfers as a substantial innovation in poverty relief, I wondered how they could so easily be converted into debts?

Torkelson would be launching the book at various venues including at the University of Johannesburg, University of Cape Town and Jacana Media in Auckland Park among other venues, from 12 May to 4 June 2026.

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By Prof Joseph Sekhampu, chief director of the NWU Business School

What is beginning to take shape in South Africa is not a single crisis that can be isolated, measured, and resolved, but a convergence of pressures aligned across economic life, political authority, and everyday experience.

In recent weeks, this convergence has become more visible, not because any one indicator has dramatically worsened, but because multiple fault lines are beginning to move at once.

They reinforce each other and narrow the space within which households, institutions, and the state can adjust. What emerges is a condition in which the strain is no longer episodic, but continuous.

This convergence is not accidental. It reflects an economic backdrop that appears stable but increasingly fragile in how it is lived and experienced. Headline indicators, such as inflation, suggest relative containment, but obscure where pressure is concentrated.

Unemployment remains structurally elevated, limiting entry into the formal economy, while rising fuel costs continue to filter through transport, food, and energy, tightening household margins. Many households are therefore operating within a narrowing band of adjustment, reliant on irregular income streams, informal activity, or transfers.

What follows from this is not only economic strain but a shift in how citizens interpret their environment and respond. It begins to shape behaviour in ways that are immediate rather than mediated through formal institutions.

The mobilisation around anti-immigration protests is instructive. It would be reductive to explain such developments solely through xenophobia. What is emerging is a search for proximate causes where structural explanations feel too distant and where frustration seeks a tangible and immediate target.

This dynamic is especially acute among younger South Africans, where prolonged exclusion from the labour market compresses both economic prospects and social identity. The absence of credible pathways to stable economic participation delays income.

It disrupts the ability to form expectations about the future, to plan, and to locate oneself within a broader trajectory of progress. Frustration becomes more localised, more personalised, and more easily mobilised, particularly in urban spaces where competition over limited opportunities and strained services is most visible.

It is at this point that economic pressure begins to translate into political behaviour within a system already under strain. The problem is its persistence, along with limited responses from a government that is busy investigating itself but unable to respond to what people are facing.

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Coalition governance has also introduced new layers of negotiation and coordination, which, while necessary, reshape how decisiveness is perceived. The visibility of negotiation across our metros and municipalities without resolution begins to register not as a democratic process, but as a hesitation.

As this perception takes hold, confidence in the government’s ability to manage outcomes weakens through repeated encounters with limits that remain unresolved.

This erosion of confidence is reinforced across multiple sites of everyday life, where the reliability of institutions on which we depend cannot be assumed. Municipal infrastructure has deteriorated in many areas, with inconsistent water supply and uneven services. P

ublic inquiries and commissions continue to surface, often clarifying failures without resolving them in ways that are visible to those affected. At the same time, households and firms are increasingly compelled to turn to private substitutes for what were once public goods, whether in security, energy, education, or service provision. P

eople increasingly organise their lives around working around state institutions rather than depending on them.

It is within this environment that mass anxiety begins to take shape, not as a temporary reaction to deteriorating conditions, but as a force that increasingly organises how individuals act, how groups respond, and how the political system is experienced in practice.

Behaviour shifts toward immediacy, with responses that are less mediated by formal institutions and more driven by the need to navigate present constraints. Mobilisation becomes one of the few visible forms through which pressure can be expressed.

In this sense, mass anxiety is not simply a reflection of strain, but a condition that structures perception, interaction, and response across the political and economic life itself.

South Africans are resilient people, but that resilience depends on a belief that institutions still work, and that belief is beginning to weaken. What is now at risk is not only the stability of current conditions, but how people begin to live within them. This is already visible in familiar ways.

Protests become more frequent and less contained, often sparked by immediate grievances but carrying deeper frustrations that have built over time. As elections approach, political choices become sharper and more defensive, with support shifting toward positions that promise immediate solutions rather than long-term reform.

At the same time, many begin to withdraw in quieter ways, reducing risk, delaying decisions, and stepping back from commitments that feel uncertain.

Pressure on food and basic necessities becomes more visible, not only in prices but in how households adjust what they buy, how often they buy, and what they go without. Over time, these responses do not ease the strain.

They reinforce it, making it harder to plan, harder to compromise, and harder for institutions to respond in ways that restore confidence. This is how a country begins to cross into an era where what was once expected is no longer guaranteed, and what is lost is not easily recovered.

Prof Joseph Sekhampu, chief director of the NWU Business School. This article was first published in North West University Website.

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Ghosts, gods, 80-year old Elvis.

Life on Mars, monsters in lochs, manufactured moon landings.

Led Zeppelin that plays backwards, turmeric that cures Covid.

None of these things are proven to be real, but many people believe them. As a reformed catholic, a light-hearted heretic, and one-time viewer of the King’s corpse, I am not one of them.

In a twist of fate that a certain Canadian cult hero would find ironic, one of the few things I do believe in happens to be artificial.

AI has been around for an entire age.

Contrary to popular lore, it didn’t miraculously appear as if from nowhere when OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022. Even when we built Helm Engine in 2016, Artificial Intelligence (in its early forms) had already been around for years.

There’s debate as to who first ‘invented’ it – it’s not as clearcut as the lightbulb or the Big Mac. But whether it was Turing or Minsky or Simon or Hinton, you can bet they weren’t sitting behind their computers, clasping their hands and laughing evil laughs while plotting the downfall of the human workforce.

AI was created for good, and should be used as such.

Fast forward to 2026, and AI has wormed its way into every corner of the digital world, thanks mainly to the Large Language Model. Not only do our mothers now know what it is, they use it to write excessively punctuated WhatsApp messages to the neighbourhood watch.

AI is – to make it unpoetically plain – everywhere.

For AI doubters, it is the very worst of times.

For believers like myself though, it is the best.

And with every release and every feature and every Wow! moment, the gap between the two sides of the AI divide is becoming more and more Dickensian.

Ask anyone on one side of the tale, and AI is the worst thing to happen since social media.

It’s taking jobs, causing brain rot, and giving people appendages they didn’t ask for. It’s hallucinating, teaching youths to cook meth, and telling even the stupidest people how smart they are for asking that insightful question.

I know I’m slightly biased here, but I get the feeling that these are the same people who still read the paper and stockpiled tinned goods in 1999.

The brave souls who’ve dared to explore the rather ‘treacherous’ territory of artificial intelligence know the opposite to be true.

I am fortunate enough to be a part of an organisation that embraced AI many years ago, when it was still a Spielberg movie. When we started our AI journey in 2016, there was very little information about what it was, who it served, and whether or not it would still be a thing in five years’ time.

For all we knew, it could’ve turned out to be another Metaverse (RIP). We didn’t have answers, but we had a can-build attitude and a tech team prepared to boldly go where few South African companies had gone before.

10 years later, Helm is proud to be a managed AI partner for some of Africa’s biggest enterprises, where we connect over 1.5 million users every month to the services they need in order to live their lives.

And we do it in any South African language because everyone should have the right to communicate in their mother tongue.

That is using AI for good.

Can it be used for evil and for real-world losses? Of course it can. But in the same way that poppies can produce drugs, democracy can dish up a Trump administration, and guitars can be used to make Nickelback songs.

The difference between AI for good and AI for evil is a matter of intention – for those who make the technology, and those who buy it. We can’t speak for all tech companies and we certainly can’t speak for all users. But we can speak for ourselves.

Belief in Artificial Intelligence is not a question of existence. (It’s real, promise.)

It’s a matter of purpose, power, and using that power for good. So perhaps the question shouldn’t be whether or not you believe in AI. The question is whether you believe in its ability to make a positive impact.

As Helm, we definitely do.

We believe in its power.

And its ability to improve the human experience.

That’s what wakes me up in the morning, keeps me going during the day, and has me waxing evangelical about the magic of Artificial Intelligence.

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