The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) has requested a formal meeting with Higher Education and Training Minister Buti Manamela, to propose limiting the period that Sector Education and Training Authorities (Setas) are placed under administration, as well as urgent meetings with the Construction Education and Training Authority (Ceta) and the Services Seta administrators.

On Tuesday, the Ceta, the Services Seta and the Local Government Seta were placed under administration.

Manamela appointed Zukile Christopher Mvalo as the Local Government Seta administrator, with Dithabe Oupa Nkoane as the head of the Ceta and Lehlogonolo Alfred Masoga to take over at the Services Seta. Their tenures as administrators will last a year.

The organisation pointed out that Manamela’s decision to place three of the Setas under administration was a sign of the extent of the corruption. 

“… but this is not a solution on its own. Unless credible boards and ethical CEOs are appointed within two months, the move will fail like so many before it. Putting a Seta under administration does not magically clean it up. We’ve seen this movie before, Setas placed under administration only to slide back into chaos once the dust settles. This time must be different,” said Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage.

He said Manamela’s intervention fell short as the Insurance Seta, which Duvenage said had its own serious governance failures, was left untouched.

He noted that concerns also extended to the administrators themselves, pointing out that at least two of the administrators have been named in allegations of maladministration and corruption.  

Duvenage said the administration period should not be an open-ended holding pattern, and must not be extended beyond 2025.

These boards must then recruit ethical, professional CEOs to steer the Setas back to their core mandate: funding skills development.

To achieve this, Outa called for a two-month deadline for administrators to hand over to credible boards, the transparent and ethical recruitment of new CEOs, protection for whistleblowers who exposed the corruption and consequence management for those implicated in maladministration.

Duvenage said Outa’s investigations had already highlighted governance and financial failures at the Insurance Seta, and leaving it off the list raised serious questions about “selective action” by the Minister.

“Whistleblower accounts and forensic findings have consistently reinforced Outa’s evidence of widespread abuse. In July 2025, Outa staged a lawful protest at Ceta’s offices to highlight the governance collapse. Although Ceta tried to discredit the protest as ‘unlawful’, it was both legal and necessary to shine a light on the abuse of public funds. Continuous media pressure and civil society interventions have since made it impossible for these issues to be ignored,” he stated.

He said South Africa could not afford another cycle of “failed interventions”.

“If this administration ends with more cadre deployment and no accountability, billions in training levies will once again be wasted. What the country needs is decisive leadership, credible boards, and ethical CEOs who put young people’s futures first,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance has rejected Manamela’s appointment of the administrators, saying the appointees are “unfit, implicated in corruption, mismanagement, fraud” in previous government jobs or have not made an impact in the Seta space.

The party has written an urgent letter to Manamela demanding his reconsideration of these appointments, and withdrawal of his announcement.