{"id":91482,"date":"2026-08-21T14:21:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T14:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/?p=91482"},"modified":"2026-08-21T14:21:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T14:21:35","slug":"outlier-169-school-feeding-schemes-university-fees-consumer-credit-surge-outstanding-land-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2026\/08\/21\/outlier-169-school-feeding-schemes-university-fees-consumer-credit-surge-outstanding-land-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Outlier #169: School feeding schemes, university fees, consumer credit surge, outstanding land claims"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\ud83e\udd6a Food for thought<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Almost 80% of children in government schools, 9.5-million learners, get at least one free meal a day through the National School Nutrition Programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The programme, started under president Nelson Mandela, aims to improve attendance and academic performance by feeding vulnerable children. It targets the poorest schools, those classified as quintile 1, 2 and 3 based on the socio-economic conditions of the surrounding community. The programme’s budget is more than R10-billion a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chart shows the share of public school learners fed through the programme in each province. In poorer, more rural provinces such as Limpopo, the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal, more than 80% of learners get a free meal. The share is much lower in Gauteng and the Western Cape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This mirrors where the poorest schools are. Almost all schools in Limpopo (97%) and the Eastern Cape (96%) fall in quintiles 1 to 3, compared with less than half in Gauteng (43%) and the Western Cape (44%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But percentages hide the scale. KwaZulu-Natal feeds 2.1-million children, the most of any province, followed by Limpopo (1.7-million) and the Eastern Cape (1.6-million). Gauteng, despite its low share, feeds 1.2-million, the fourth most, because it is the most populous province.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The share of learners on the programme has risen from 63% in 2009 to 78% in 2025, largely because it was extended from primary schools to high schools between 2009 and 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83d\udcda\u00a0We recently started working with the Education Desk, a new journalism project. This chart and story were produced in partnership with them. Find more education stories on their\u00a0website<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and subscribe to the\u00a0<\/em>Education Desk newsletter<\/em><\/a>\u00a0for updates.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83c\udfeb\u00a0Price of entry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Every year thousands of people start university and with that comes the financial burden of paying for their education. Costs can be vastly different from one institution to another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The University of Cape Town (UCT) is notably the most expensive public university in South Africa with a degree costing on average R89,000. UCT is also one of the more exclusive schools in the country, taking in only 4,960 first-year students in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Costs also vary depending on the course you choose to take, some courses range from R62,000-R110,580 (BCom) while others are R113,000 (MBChB).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other end of the spectrum, the University of South Africa (UNISA) offers degrees from R15,000 to R26,000 per year and has a significantly larger intake of more than 11,000 first-year students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83d\udcb8\u00a0Loan rangers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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South Africans are applying for credit like never before. Applications have more than tripled over the past 18 years, from 6-million in the first quarter of 2008 to 20.4-million in the first quarter of 2026, according to the National Credit Regulator (NCR).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rejection rate has climbed too, from four in ten applications to more than six in ten over the same time. The number of applications actually approved as new accounts has grown by almost 50%, from 3.6-million to 5.3-million a quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over half of those accounts are for credit facilities, which include credit cards, store cards and bank overdrafts, according to the NCR\u2019s Consumer Credit Market Report. The same report indicated that just over half of the accounts are with retailers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week we looked at the recent\u00a0surge in credit providers<\/a>\u00a0in South Africa, up from 6,215 in 2022 to more than 10,200 this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u23f1\ufe0f\u00a0Owe slow<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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When a business provides a service to a municipality, like the City of Johannesburg, it should be paid within 30 days, according to the Auditor-General of South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practice, that\u2019s rare. The fastest average payment time the city has managed in the past five years is 68 days. That was in the 2020\/21 financial year. It got progressively worse until last year, when it managed to reduce the average time to payment to 134 days. Pity all those contractors with cashflow problems waiting for four months to be paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johannesburg wasn\u2019t even the worst-performing metro. Nelson Mandela Bay took more than six months (190 days) on average to pay its creditors, and Mangaung took over five months (168 days) in the 2024\/25 financial year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cape Town was the quickest payer at 46 days \u2013 but it still didn\u2019t meet the 30-day deadline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There are municipalities that do pay their bills within in 30 days (there are about 120 of them), but, as the Auditor-General points out, that\u2019s less than half of them. On average, it took South Africa\u2019s municipalities 113 days to pay their creditors, according to the Auditor-General. With late payments comes interest and penalties for which municipalities have had to fork out R19.95-billion since 2021\/22.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Produced in partnership with\u00a0Our City News<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83c\udfde\ufe0f\u00a0Land limbo<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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28 years after the first deadline to lodge land claims, 5,160 claims still need to be finalised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between 2014 and 2016, a new window to lodge claims was opened. But the Constitutional Court ruled that all the \u201cold order\u201d claims lodged by December 1998 must be finalised before \u201cnew order\u201d claims can be assessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the current rate, it will take at least 15 years for all the old order claims to be settled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Valid land claims are cases where people were dispossessed of land after the Natives Land Act came into force in 1913, and where such dispossession resulted from racial discrimination. Claims are settled either through financial compensation from the government or by giving suitable land back, in which case the government usually buys the land from the owner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A total of 63,455 land claims were lodged by the 1998 deadline. Some of these were later split, and by 2007 the government reported a total of 79,696 claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of 31 December 2025, 2.4-million people and 468,761 households have reportedly benefited from land restitution. At least R60-billion has been spent on settling and finalising claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the full\u00a0GroundUp\u00a0article here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83d\udcb0\u00a0Political party funding<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

With the municipal elections fast approaching, we\u2019re keeping an eye on data that can tell us how the parties are doing. The Democratic Alliance is streaks ahead of the others when it comes to donations, declaring R128-million between January 2025 and March 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does that mean? It\u2019s hard to tell when five of the main parties, including the EFF, the Patriotic Alliance and MK, hadn\u2019t declared anything at all by March. We can\u2019t assume they haven\u2019t received any donations just because they\u2019re not declaring anything. They could be sitting on a pile made up of hundreds of small-ish donations of less than R200,000. Who knows?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, we\u2019re waiting for the Electoral Commission to release the next batch of donations (which will cover up to June 2026) to see if any of them reveal a philanthropic boost. You can keep an eye on who is donating to whom and how much with our\u00a0political party donations tool,<\/a>\u00a0which goes back to 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Click here for a link to all references for this newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91485,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1386,1387,1380],"tags":[293,581,50,1487,1488,577,1489,1485,40,1376,496,178,1486,1260],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-91482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-publication","category-the-outlier","category-this-week-in-charts","tag-cape-town","tag-credit","tag-johannesburg","tag-land-claims","tag-mangaung","tag-national-credit-regulator","tag-political-party-funding","tag-rhodes-university","tag-south-africa","tag-stellenbosch","tag-stellenbosch-university","tag-university-degrees","tag-university-of-cape-town","tag-wits-university"],"acf":{"big_number":"","big_number_caption":"","big_number_link":"","big_number_background":"","big_number_text_colour":"#000000","big_number_icon":false,"big_number_wide":"yes","featured_chart":false,"flourish_chart_id":"","flourish_sub_title":"","flourish_chart_width":"medium","is_newsletter_post":"No","post_style":"bc","show_on_front":"Yes","link_through":"Yes","chart_url":"","background_colour":"#0089AA","text_colour":"#FFFFFF"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91482"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91492,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91482\/revisions\/91492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91482"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=91482"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=91482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}