Mail & Guardian reports that more than 40,000 higher education graduates have yet to receive their certificates — some years after they qualified.  

Engineers, artisans and business students are either unemployed, working at retail stores or about to lose the jobs they have found without their certificates.  The backlog stretches to 1992.  This is a problem the higher education minister, Blade Nzimande, has failed to address since he took up his post more than 10 years ago.  Recently Nzimande told MPs that, having led the department from 2009 to 2017, he was “ashamed” that he “could not deal with this problem even then”.  Last week, the Mail & Guardian interviewed dozens of former technical and vocational education and training (TVET) college students who, years after finishing their studies, were still without their certificates.  Theirs were stories of hardship, broken dreams and lost hope because the department cannot clean up its certificate backlog.  As of 14 October, more than 40,000 certificates were outstanding— across all qualifications offered at TVET colleges.  The certificates are supposed to be issued within three months of students completing their studies.  Since 2015, the department, as well as the State Information Technology Agency (Sita), have made several commitments to deal once and for all with the outstanding certificates, yet the problem persists.  Sita is responsible for collating the data from colleges to produce certificates, which are issued via the educational quality assurer, Umalusi.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Bongekile Macupe at Mail & Guardian (paywall access only)

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