EFF welcomes the automatic granting of National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) funding for SASSA grant recipients

24 January 2023

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) welcomes the long overdue decision to provide automatic student funding at a post-secondary schooling level, for recipients of the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) grant.

This decision comes after prolonged calls by the EFF, for those who are recognised by the system as indigent to not have to perform their poverty in order to receive funding from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).

On numerous occasions, the Commander in Chief and President of the EFF Julius Malema has illustrated the idiotic and humiliating process that NSFAS and institutions of higher learning subject the children of the poor to, once they seek funding at Universities, Universities of Technology and TVET Colleges.

The children of the poor, who are predominantly young black people participate in a yearly exercise of poverty Olympics, where they are expected to exhibit their orphan status, the fact that they are on social grants and prove that they are poor enough to receive funding for education.

The EFF has for the past 10-years highlighted this issue and more importantly, the need to synchronise the data at SASSA, Home Affairs, the Department of Basic Education and the Department of Higher Education to avoid subjecting qualifying prospective students to unnecessary administration and humiliation.

The EFF is vindicated for calling for this sound and logical process that should have been implemented years ago.

Through our EFF Students' Command, we will monitor and ensure that no prospective student is asked to provide proof of poverty in order to receive funding.

This is a great victory and a testament that the ideas of the EFF remain superior, practical and implementable to better the lives of our people and ensure that education is accessed by all.

Issued by Sinawo Thambo, National Spokesperson, EFF, 25 January 2023