A student leader at Rustenburg TVET College, trusted by her peers, allegedly stole R14,000 from seven new students’ NSFAS accounts. She reportedly used her special access to transfer money to temporary cards after hours, then withdrew the cash from supermarkets. This left the first-year students, many from poor backgrounds, with no money for basic needs. The college and NSFAS are now looking into the system to prevent such betrayal from happening again.
How did an SRC leader allegedly steal R14,000 from NSFAS wallets?
An ex-SRC officer at Rustenburg TVET College allegedly used her administrative “super-user” rights on the Tenet payment portal to access first-year students’ NSFAS accounts. She reportedly logged in after hours, transferred irregular amounts to temporary cards, and withdrew funds from supermarkets, leaving seven students with insufficient funds for basic necessities.
Inside the Tenet Portal Heist: How One Student Leader Reportedly Drained Seven Allowances
Rustenburg TVET College woke up to a scandal that reads like a campus thriller when a 24-year-old ex-SRC officer landed in police custody on 3 December 2025. Investigators say she treated the college’s Tenet payment portal like her personal piggy bank, allegedly looting exactly R14,000 from the NSFAS allowances of seven first-year students during 2023. Tenet, the online engine that pushes monthly living allowances to needy undergraduates, became the silent witness to a string of unauthorized withdrawals carried out at supermarket till points.
According to the Hawks’ Serious Economic Offences team, the accused enjoyed administrative “super-user” rights that let her peek into any student account. She reportedly used those rights after hours, logging in with the same calm routine one would reserve for checking email. Once inside, she is said to have funnelled small, irregular amounts onto temporary cards, then hit Checkers, Shoprite and Pick n Pay stores across the platinum-mining city. The victims, most of them fresh from rural high schools, only discovered the looting when they tried to swipe for toiletries and watched “insufficient funds” flash on the terminal screens.
Colonel Katlego Mogale, spokesperson for the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, says the total haul reached R14,000, spread unevenly across the seven complainants. Some lost R1,200, others as much as R3,500; every rand represented a week of meals, data or taxi fare. The withdrawals began early in the first semester, when new students were still learning how to reset passwords and check balances. By the time they grasped the system, the money had vanished into groceries, airtime and cash-back purchases that left no paper trail – only CCTV footage that now forms part of the docket.
Aftershock on Campus: Confidence Shaken, Leaders Demand System Overhaul
News of the arrest detonated like a thunderclap through lecture halls and res dining halls. Student WhatsApp groups swapped screenshots of zero balances faster than the college could issue a formal statement. The incident stoked old fears about NSFAS fraud, but the twist – that the alleged perpetrator once chaired fundraising campaigns and handed out food-parcel vouchers – cut especially deep. First-years who had trusted her with photocopied ID books and banking PINs now felt doubly violated: first by poverty, then by one of their own.
SASCO’s local chapter staged a sit-in at the financial-aid office, demanding answers in vernacular chants that echoed off concrete walls. Their placards asked how a peer, elected to defend student interests, could allegedly weaponise the same tools meant to uplift the poor. College management scrambled to set up a crisis desk, while NSFAS head office promised an internal audit of every Tenet transaction logged between February and October 2023. The heat quickly spread to national radio talk shows, where callers asked whether the scheme pointed to wider collusion with retail cashiers or college IT staff.
Advocacy groups warn that confidence, once cracked, is hard to glue back together. Many beneficiaries already view the bursary system as a lottery of long queues and abrupt cancellations; discovering that a student leader can allegedly loot accounts at will reinforces the stereotype that “poor kids’ money is easy pickings.” Psychologists volunteering at the campus wellness centre report spikes in anxiety, especially among young women who left home for the first time and now distrust every friendly face offering help with laptop setups or banking apps.
Court Date Looms: Prosecutors Prepare a Paper Trail of Digital Footprints
The suspect spent a single night in the Rustenburg police holding cells before appearing for a formal bail hearing. Prosecutors intend to present printouts of IP addresses, time-stamped login records and retail receipts that allegedly map her movements from campus computer lab to supermarket till. Each transaction, investigators say, was completed within minutes of an online session originating from the SRC office after 19:00, when most admin staff had clocked out. The defence team has not yet disclosed its strategy, but early indications suggest it will question whether the logins can be tied conclusively to one individual on a shared network.
Magistrate Johnson Mokoena reminded a packed public gallery that South African law presumes innocence, yet the mood among students leaned heavily toward retribution. Outside court, a small group sang struggle songs while clutching photocopied pledge cards that read, “Zero tolerance for student-on-student exploitation.” The Hawks, for their part, insist this case is a litmus test for their ability to police cyber-fraud inside higher-education institutions. They have pledged to trace every rand, even if it means trawling through months of loyalty-card data and mobile-money vouchers.
Should the state secure a conviction, guidelines for theft out of a fiduciary relationship suggest a sentence starting at five years’ imprisonment, partly suspended for first-time offenders. Yet the reputational damage is immediate: the accused surrendered her SRC blazer the moment campus elections rolled in a new cohort, and her social-media timelines have gone silent. Alumni who once congratulated her on “breaking the glass ceiling for women in student politics” now untag themselves from group photos. Whether she walks free or spends time behind bars, the digital imprint of this scandal will trail her CV like a stubborn shadow.
Rebuilding the Safety Net: Calls for Biometric Logins and Real-Time Alerts
While lawyers trade affidavits, the college council has convened an emergency task team to redesign how student allowances are disbursed. Early proposals include biometric authentication – fingerprint or facial recognition – before any Tenet profile can be altered, plus an SMS gateway that pings beneficiaries the instant a withdrawal request is created. NSFAS, still licking wounds from previous scandals involving ghost students and inflated invoices, says it will pilot the upgrades at Rustenburg before rolling them out to the country’s other 49 TVET campuses.
Tech-savvy students have launched their own awareness campaign: #LockYourStipend. Volunteers man help desks during registration week, teaching newcomers how to change default passwords, switch on two-factor verification and recognise phishing links. They also distribute a free “allowance tracker” spreadsheet that colour-codes expected versus actual balances, making discrepancies visible at a glance. The goal, they insist, is to transfer power back into the hands of the poorest students, who often own cheap Android phones but lack data to monitor their accounts in real time.
The bigger picture, analysts argue, is ethical renewal inside student governance itself. SRC members wield significant influence – allocating seats in shuttle buses, negotiating residence prices, even recommending who gets emergency food vouchers. Training in fiduciary duty, transparency dashboards and public quarterly audits could turn councils into watchdogs instead of soft targets for corruption. Until such reforms take root, the Rustenburg episode will keep haunting conferences and policy documents as a cautionary tale: a reminder that when oversight sleeps, the hunger of a single rogue operator can devour the hopes of seven newcomers who just wanted a fair shot at a diploma.
What happened at Rustenburg TVET College?
An ex-SRC leader at Rustenburg TVET College allegedly stole R14,000 from the NSFAS accounts of seven first-year students. She reportedly used her administrative ‘super-user’ rights on the Tenet payment portal to transfer money to temporary cards and then withdrew the cash from supermarkets, leaving the students without funds for basic needs.
How was the student leader able to steal the money?
The accused, a 24-year-old ex-SRC officer, had administrative ‘super-user’ rights on the Tenet payment portal, which allowed her to access student accounts. She allegedly logged in after hours, transferred irregular amounts to temporary cards, and then made withdrawals from retail stores like Checkers, Shoprite, and Pick n Pay.
Who were the victims of this alleged theft?
The victims were seven first-year students at Rustenburg TVET College, many from poor backgrounds and fresh from rural high schools. They only discovered the theft when they tried to use their NSFAS allowances and found their accounts had insufficient funds.
What are the consequences for the alleged perpetrator?
The ex-SRC officer was arrested on December 3, 2025, and is facing charges. Prosecutors plan to present digital evidence, including IP addresses, login records, and retail receipts. If convicted, she could face a sentence starting at five years’ imprisonment, partly suspended for first-time offenders. Her reputation has also been severely damaged.
What measures are being taken to prevent future incidents?
The college and NSFAS are investigating the system. Proposed solutions include biometric authentication (fingerprint or facial recognition) for Tenet profiles, SMS alerts for withdrawal requests, and student awareness campaigns like #LockYourStipend to educate newcomers on account security. NSFAS plans to pilot these upgrades at Rustenburg before a wider rollout.
What is the broader impact of this incident?
The incident has shaken student confidence in the NSFAS system and student leadership. It has sparked calls for an overhaul of student allowance disbursement methods and for greater ethical renewal and financial transparency within student governance. Advocacy groups warn that such betrayals reinforce negative stereotypes about the vulnerability of funds for poor students.
