Short Report

The R14-million mistake is more than a morality game

01 September 2017 - 12:15 By tom eaton
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Walter Sisulu University student and Pasma leader Sibongile Mani
Walter Sisulu University student and Pasma leader Sibongile Mani
Image: Supplied

You’re walking through a building‚ let’s say the accountancy department of Walter Sisulu University in Mthatha‚ and you find a handbag. You open the handbag‚ and inside you find R14-million. What do you do?

We’ve all played that old morality game‚ and we’ve all found brilliant ways of fudging the answer to make ourselves look less dodgy than we are.

For second-year student Sibongile Mani‚ however‚ the answer was obvious: you spend the dosh as fast as you can. In her case that worked out to about R11‚000 a day as she burned her way through R818‚000 of the R14-million accidentally deposited into her account by a service provider of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme.

So far the media spotlight is turned squarely on Mani and her decision to make hay while the sun shines. We’re all playing the handbag game again‚ and Mani is losing.

The problem‚ though‚ is that the game is distracting us from a less sensational but perhaps more important story.

Now‚ I’ve never had R14-million deposited into any account‚ but every so often I write a piece for an international publication that sends literally dozens of dollars my way. The nanosecond that this happens‚ my bank phones me‚ wanting to know the reason for the payment‚ the names of my maternal grandparents and my family motto in Greek and Latin‚ before sending a courier in rubber gloves to do a cheek swab.

You’d have thought that when Mani’s student account received an eight-figure amount‚ at least one red light would have blinked somewhere‚ whether at Intellimali (the service provider used by the NSFAS) or at a bank. And yet reports suggest that the 73-day spending spree only came to an end when jealous colleagues ratted her out.

In other words‚ if Mani had kept pouring Johnny Walker Gold down the right throats‚ she could have kept going for many months more and perhaps spent millions.

Given that the funding of students is an issue at the heart of national politics and the economic future of this country‚ it could be argued that the organisations that hand out the money are right up there with the Reserve Bank and Treasury as institutions of strategic importance. The fact that Intellimali is making R14-million mistakes is worrying‚ but the fact that it doesn’t know it’s making R14-million mistakes‚ well‚ there’s no accounting for that kind of incompetence.

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