Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training Yusuf Cassim met with NSFAS Administrator Professor Hlengani Mathebula in mid-July 2026 to address ongoing funding and allowance delays affecting students at multiple institutions, including outstanding cases at the University of South Africa (Unisa), Nelson Mandela University, and Central University of Technology students living in non-accredited housing who are still waiting on allowances well into the academic year.
What’s going wrong
According to a statement from SAnews, the government’s official news service, NSFAS had more than 1,500 outstanding “GAP” cases at Unisa alone — cases relating to the means test used to determine whether a student’s household income qualifies them for funding — with a commitment made to resolve them by 17 July 2026. A further 400-plus outstanding cases were reported at Nelson Mandela University. Separately, NSFAS deployed staff to Central University of Technology to help students who are living in accommodation that has not been formally accredited by NSFAS, and who have therefore not been receiving their allowances.
NSFAS administers a funding scheme reported to be worth more than R50 billion a year, covering tuition, accommodation and living allowances for qualifying students at universities and TVET colleges. A scheme of that scale inevitably generates a high volume of individual cases that can go wrong — incorrect banking details, unverified accommodation, disputed means-test outcomes — and officials have said processing capacity has struggled to keep pace with the volume of cases at some institutions.
Why the higher education ministry is under pressure
Separately from the allowance delays, the Higher Education Ministry issued a statement in mid-July 2026 defending NSFAS’s administration costs after public criticism, and Business Day reported that government is seeking new funding sources to cover a growing NSFAS shortfall. Taken together, the funding gap and the operational delays point to a scheme that is financially stretched at the same time as it’s trying to fix processing backlogs — a combination that tends to produce exactly the kind of mid-year hardship being reported by affected students.
What this means for affected students
For students still waiting on allowances or a resolved GAP case, the practical effect can be serious: unpaid accommodation, no money for food or transport, and — in the case of students in non-accredited housing — the risk of losing that accommodation altogether while the accreditation issue is unresolved. Universities themselves have sometimes stepped in with emergency food or accommodation support while NSFAS cases are processed, though this varies significantly by institution.
- Students with unresolved NSFAS cases should contact their institution’s financial aid office directly, in addition to logging queries with NSFAS itself, since institutions can sometimes escalate cases faster than the general NSFAS query channel.
- Students in accommodation NSFAS has not yet accredited should ask their institution whether interim arrangements or emergency funding are available while accreditation is finalised.
- Keep a record of every reference number, email and query date — this becomes essential if a case needs to be escalated.
Background: NSFAS’s role in South African higher education
NSFAS was created to fund higher education for students from households below a set income threshold, covering registration, tuition, accommodation, food and a personal care allowance. It has grown rapidly in scale over the past decade and now funds a large share of first-generation university and TVET college students. That scale is also its recurring vulnerability: NSFAS has faced repeated administrative crises in past years, ranging from disbursement delays to disputes over accredited student accommodation providers.
What happens next
The Deputy Minister’s engagement with NSFAS leadership set a mid-July deadline for resolving the Unisa GAP backlog, which should give a near-term signal of whether the scheme can clear its case backlog on the timeline it has committed to. The larger funding shortfall reported by Business Day is a separate, longer-running issue that is likely to resurface when the next national budget cycle is finalised.
Why NSFAS delays keep recurring
This is not the first year NSFAS has faced reports of allowance and processing delays, and the recurring nature of the problem points to structural rather than purely one-off causes. A scheme funding well over a million students across dozens of institutions, each with its own accommodation providers, banking arrangements and administrative processes, generates an enormous volume of individual cases that must be verified and processed largely through centralised systems. When those systems face capacity constraints — whether from staffing, technology, or simply the sheer scale of applications — delays tend to cluster around the start of each academic year and again mid-year as circumstances change and new disputes arise.
Universities themselves have limited ability to resolve NSFAS-side delays directly, since disbursement decisions and case processing sit with the scheme rather than the institution, even though it’s the institution’s students who bear the immediate consequences of a delay.
The accommodation accreditation problem specifically
The issue affecting Central University of Technology students living in non-accredited housing points to a specific, recurring friction point in the NSFAS system: private student accommodation providers must be formally accredited by NSFAS before students living there can receive housing allowances, but the accreditation process itself can lag behind the pace at which students actually sign leases, particularly in areas with limited formal student housing stock. This leaves some students in a difficult position — legitimately enrolled, legitimately housed, but caught in an administrative gap between where they live and what NSFAS has formally approved. Students in this situation are generally advised to confirm a landlord’s accreditation status, or the status of their application for it, before signing a lease wherever possible, though this isn’t always practical given housing shortages near some campuses.
What government has said about the funding shortfall
Separately from the case-processing delays, Business Day’s reporting on a growing NSFAS funding shortfall points to a more fundamental constraint behind some of the friction affecting students: even a well-run administrative process cannot fully resolve delays if the scheme is also managing a widening gap between the funding it needs and the funding it has secured. Government has indicated it is seeking additional funding sources, though the outcome of that search, and any resulting change to the scheme’s financial position, was not yet finalised at the time of the Deputy Minister’s engagement with NSFAS leadership in July 2026.
Why timing makes NSFAS delays especially damaging
Funding delays are disruptive at any point in the academic year, but mid-year delays carry a particular risk: students who fall behind on accommodation or living cost payments risk losing housing or facing eviction proceedings partway through a semester, which can derail an academic year that was otherwise on track. This is part of why universities sometimes step in with emergency, institution-funded interim support — not because it is their financial responsibility to cover NSFAS shortfalls, but because the alternative, a student dropping out mid-year over a processing delay, carries a much higher long-term cost.
Frequently asked questions
What is a NSFAS “GAP” case?
It refers to disputed or unresolved means-test outcomes, where a student’s household income assessment needs further verification before a funding decision can be confirmed.
Who should a student contact if their NSFAS allowance hasn’t arrived?
Start with your institution’s financial aid or student funding office, and log a formal query directly with NSFAS through its official contact channels, keeping a reference number for every interaction.
Sources Used
- SAnews.gov.za — Deputy Minister Cassim engages NSFAS over funding delays
- SAnews.gov.za — Higher Education Ministry clarifies NSFAS administration costs
- Business Day — NSFAS funding shortfall reporting
