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The National Education, Health & Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU) welcomes the resignation of Mr. Sizwe Nxasana as the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) Board Chairperson. NEHAWU welcomes his resignation as a necessary step towards fixing NSFAS and helping it avoid being plunged into a further crisis of collapsing the scheme by those with no interest in serving poor students and the working class large.

As NEHAWU, we have always been at the forefront of calling for Nxasana’s resignation since he was appointed in 2015. The national Union has always been opposed to his appointment and we were proven right when he tried to increase state funding into NSFAS to establish an alternative Student Funding Scheme to NSFAS, called Ikusasa Student Funding Programme (ISFAP). The ISFAPS is an initiative of Nxasana meant to swallow NSFAS through a partnership with South African leading banks, namely Absa and Standard Bank.

Mr. Nxasana has always been conflicted in the oversight and operations of NSFAS, thus he forced the appointment of Mr. Steven Zwane who initially did not apply for the job and is a close friend of Nxasana through their private education foundations, Future Nations Schools (owned by Nxasana) and the EYLED youth programme (owned by Zwane).

To affirm our belief as NEHAWU that Nxasana had no intentions of fixing NSFAS he did not even fundraise a single cent but operated with the funds from the Department of Higher Education and Training. As NEHAWU, we believe that him blaming the announcement of fee free education last year by former President Jacob Zuma in 2017 is simply lame and an attempt at cheap politics.

As NEHAWU, we further call for the immediate resignation of Mr. Steven Zwane who arrived on the 1st September 2017 and employed his relatives and friends in Senior Management positions and created the crisis of payment delays to poor students and ran the onslaught of undermining NSFAS workers.
 
The national union calls on Minister Mrs. Naledi Pandor to expedite the reengineering of the board and the Executive Management in making sure the mandate of the scheme is adhered to including the full implementation of free education and payment of student allowances to be paid on time through the new Student Centered Model.
 
Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat