In a drastic move to curb financial leakages, Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube has announced that KwaZulu-Natal has become the first province to initiate a comprehensive audit of its teaching staff to identify and eliminate ‘ghost employees’.
The minister’s declaration came during her keynote address at the G20 National Education Indaba in Cape Town on Monday. The staff verifications form a critical part of a broader national strategy to develop financial recovery plans for each province, a necessity forced by severe budget cuts from the National Treasury.
“Ghost teachers and students siphoning money from the Department of Basic Education will be flushed out,” Minister Gwarube stated emphatically. She explained that these phantom employees and learners drain crucial funds meant for employee salaries and norms and standards budgets, respectively.
The context for this crackdown is a dire financial landscape. Minister Gwarube revealed that consolidated budget pressures on provincial education departments between the 2021/22 and 2027/28 financial years amount to a staggering R78 billion to R118 billion.
“This is all part of a strategy to have what we call the financial recovery plans that I’ve asked provinces to come up with,” Gwarube said. “How do we recover financially in the current fiscal envelope that we’re in? There is no new money. So we have to make sure that we’re rooting out leakages in the system.”
The Western Cape, host of the Indaba, is among the hardest hit. The province has already announced the loss of 2,400 teaching posts in 2025 due to a R3.8 billion budget shortfall over the next three years. Other provinces are facing similar constraints, which threaten their ability to fill vacant teaching posts and could lead to increased classroom overcrowding.
The two-day Indaba served as a strategic platform to formulate solutions not only for domestic challenges but also to develop proposals for the global stage, which South Africa will put forward at the G20 summit in November.
A key takeaway from the gathering was the need for international collaboration. “We also need to look outward at what other countries are doing well,” Gwarube urged. “We are not the only country with low economic growth… There are many other countries that have grappled with exactly the same challenges.”
Attendees agreed on several recommendations, including placing greater emphasis on early childhood care and education. There was also a consensus on the growing need to prepare teachers for modern classrooms shaped by technology, climate change, and global mobility.
As the national department and provinces scramble to navigate the fiscal crisis, all eyes will be on the outcome of KwaZulu-Natal’s audit, which could serve as a model for a nationwide purge of ghost workers and a critical step towards financial stability.
