Both the public and private sector must audit and confront those with fake qualifications.
The recent revelations of high profiled South Africans as having fake qualifications has caused much serious consternation in our country. These media exposures came in the heels of the similar revelations of various public figures last year reported as in possession of the fake qualifications. The Minister of Higher education and Training, Dr Blade Nzimande, immediately directed the Department and SAQA to develop a national register and to seek a legal advice on the implications of instituting fraud charges against these persons.
As a response to minister's directives in November last year, SAQA started developing a national register which will record all those South Africans confirmed as having fake qualifications. Details are being developed in the context of various considerations and circumstances under which other people may be in this status. These situations present themselves in couple of streams:
There are those who consciously buy or acquire these qualifications from international Universities that are not legitimate. They pursue this route as short-cuts to avoid a long and tortuous process of studying and a risk of failing. These are individuals who are so intent on rising to positions of influence using these qualifications to prop up their career pathways.
The second stream is those who innocently enrol to these Universities without doing some due diligence in establishing their legitimate status.
The last element is those who either enrol and fail or deregister but in the Curriculum Vitae claim to be in possession of those qualifications.