Pay the right amount of money to the right students at the right time.

This was the task that the chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training, Connie September, gave to the floundering National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) on Thursday.

In the meeting, it was revealed that NSFAS still hasn’t finalised all payments for 2017 and that payments for 2018 were also lagging behind, although most students benefiting from the scheme had been paid.

The genesis of their problems, said executive officer Steven Zwane, was the decision to adopt a new system, taken at the Higher Education Summit in December 2016. 

No ‘adequate solutions’

Dr Diane Parker, the deputy director general for universities at the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), pointed out that funding was not the root of the NSFAS’ failings. 

“The major area of concern is the unknown number of students who haven’t received funding,” she said.

She added that they had concerns about the quality of NSFAS data.

“Despite the daily support of departmental officials and DHET support teams, the NSFAS was not able to put in place adequate solutions to address the problems coherently and quickly. 

In July, Minister of Higher Education and Training Naledi Pandor directed the board to not open 2019 applications, and to first complete the funding cycles for 2017 and 2018. The 2019 applications were supposed to open on August 1.

READ: Students’ R30bn aid in shambles

In the first week of August, two NSFAS board members and its chairperson, Sizwe Nxasana, resigned.

Pandor called an emergency board meeting, where the board decided to ask the minister to put the NSFAS under administration, which would effectively bring their term to an end.

Pandor agreed. Nonetheless, Neil Garrod was appointed board chairperson.

He told the committee that they would continue their work while they wait on the appointment of an administrator and that they did not take the decision to commit “hara-kiri” – effectively disbanding themselves by requesting to be put under administration – lightly.

“The immediate task of the administrator is to ensure the effective close-out of the 2017 and 2018 funding decisions and disbursements, [and to] put in place plans for the 2019 funding cycle,” Parker said.

“The 2019 applications will be opened in early September 2018 and an effective plan for delivering student financial aid, which will involve the support and collaboration of universities and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges will be developed in the next month. Work has already begun on this,” she said.

‘Our anxiety is not gone’

The committee welcomed Pandor’s and the department’s interventions but wasn’t happy that things escalated to this point.

National Freedom Party MP Moses Khubisa said: “Why are the heads not rolling if the job was not done well?”

ANC MP Juli Killian added that she would be guilty of dereliction of her duties if she didn’t express her “very, very serious reservations” about the NSFAS’ management.

“They have really done South Africa a very serious disfavour. Some of the sufferings of students could have been averted,” she said. 

“We can’t let those who let South Africa, let the young people down get away scot-free,” she said.

September said: “We’re not walking away from this meeting saying that everything is fine, that all students will get their money.”

“I don’t think the anxiety is gone,” she said.

“Our anxiety is not gone,” Parker agreed. “We know we are not out of the woods.”

Zwane said the department should also shoulder some of the blame for the decision to change the system.

The office of the Minister of Police has again capitulated in what was a three-pronged legal attack by a Durban businessman, who was harassed and thrown into jail several times because of a”civil dispute” he had with racehorse owner Roy Moodley.

Earlier this year, the minister conceded liability for the actions of Durban North cluster commander Reuben Govender – allegedly acting at the behest of Moodley – for two of Vinesh Juglall’s claims for damages.

Last week, when the third incident was to be ventilated in a trial in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Durban, the matter again settled with an order that Juglall be paid R500 000 in compensation for all of his claims and that the minister pay his legal costs.

READ: Businessman wins case against police after being jailed by cop on Roy Moodley’s instructions

Juglall sued both the minister and Govender, but the order taken by consent was only against the minister.

In his court papers, Juglall said he had been involved in a business deal with Moodley over the proposed R12m sale of a property in Durban’s city centre.

The deal also involved an option to purchase the shares in the Durban Computer College and DCC Campus Computer FET Institution.

When the deal soured, Moodley summoned Juglall to a meeting at an attorney’s office in March 2012, ostensibly to resolve the dispute.

But when Juglall arrived there, Moodley was absent and he was arrested by Govender on a charge of fraud, alternatively theft, without a warrant.

He was detained at the Phoenix police station until the following morning.

‘Pay up or stay jailed’

He said Govender told him that he would stay behind bars until he settled the matter or paid back the R12m.

He was only released after his attorney brought an urgent application in the High Court in Durban.

Juglall also obtained an interdict against Govender, preventing any further intimidation or harassment.

Juglall’s attorney Zane Haneef, then made representations to the office of the National Director of Public Prosecutions, asking for a determination of whether or not there was any merit in the allegations of criminal conduct which justified his arrest.

While this investigation was being done – and notwithstanding an agreement that, should there be any need to arrest Juglall it would be done by arrangement – Govender arrested him again without a warrant.

He was detained at the Phoenix police station and only released after another urgent High Court application.

The third claim – which settled last week – involved Juglall’s arrest in February 2013.

It was alleged that Govender, or other police officers “acted maliciously” by taking the docket to a prosecutor to sign off on a warrant for the same charges without informing her about the history of the matter and that it was still being investigated by the NDPP’s office. The criminal charges were later withdrawn.

READ MORE: Police go after News24 journalist and Jacques Pauw

News24 has previously exposed an alleged “chummy relationship” between Moodley and the senior police officer.

This was after it was revealed that Govender had sought and obtained a warrant of arrest against journalists and authors Jacques Pauw and Pieter-Louis Myburgh.

The complainant was Roy Moodley, who had been named in their books as being one of former president Jacob Zuma’s benefactors.

The warrant was later cancelled after the intervention of senior police officer Brigadier Andre Holby. He also laid a criminal charge against Govender.

IPID spokesperson Moses Dlamini said there were currently three cases under investigation against Govender.

“Two of them are complete. Once all three are completed, we will refer them to the NPA for a decision.”

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The owner of the firearm that was found next to the body of co-author of The Lost Boys of Bird Island Mark Minnie, could be charged with negligence.

Police spokesperson Captain Johan Rheeder said the owner, believed to be a friend of Minnie’s, could be charged after his firearm was found near to Minnie’s body.

Rheeder added that, although a case has not yet been opened, it was standard procedure.

Fifty-eight-year-old Minnie was found on the friend’s smallholding in Theescombe on Monday evening and he had a gunshot wound to the head. The firearm was next to his body.

READ: Mark Minnie did not use his own firearm in alleged suicide – police

Rheeder also confirmed that an autopsy had been performed on Minnie on Tuesday.

He said blood samples were taken and gun residue tests on Minnie’s hands were done before they were sent to a forensics laboratory in Cape Town for testing.

Responding to rumours that Minnie was shot between the eyes, Rheeder said he could confirm that Minnie had sustained a single gunshot wound to the head, but could not be more specific about the location of the wound.

He added that the death was still being treated as an inquest.

Minnie was the co-author of the controversial book, The Lost Boys of Bird Island, which details allegations that former apartheid minister Magnus Malan was part of a paedophile network.

Since news of his death broke, many have questioned the timing and nature of Minnie’s death.

“There is no way that he would have taken his own life. What is happening is very scary. Clearly, there is more to this,” said a former colleague, who worked with Minnie when he was in the police narcotics unit in the 1980s. The person did not want to be named.

Another colleague, who also asked to remain anonymous, described Minnie as a man who “worked hard and played hard”.

“He was a bit of a maverick, but he got things done. He had a wide network of contacts back then,” he said.  

News24 previously reported that the book detailed how three former National Party ministers, including one who is still alive, were alleged central figures in a paedophile ring that operated during apartheid.

Investigations into Malan – as well as John Wiley (former minister of environmental affairs) and another former minister, who was considered a possible successor to then president PW Botha and who is still alive – were halted by the police, and the investigating officer was hounded from service in the 1980s.

These and other explosive allegations are contained in the book by Minnie, a former police officer, and Chris Steyn, a former investigative journalist.

According to the book, Malan, Wiley and the other minister were involved, along with disgraced Port Elizabeth businessman Dave Allen, in ferrying coloured minors to Bird Island, in Algoa Bay near Port Elizabeth, where the children were molested and forced to satisfy the older men’s sexual fantasies.

Malan died in 2011, while Wiley and Allen’s deaths in 1987 were recorded as suicides, fuelling the speculation around Minnie’s death.