Umalusi CEO Dr Mafu Rakometsi announced that at least 11 suspects have been arrested in connection with the illegal buying and selling of fraudulent matric certificates since October last year.
The announcement came as the quality assurance body briefed the media on Monday morning on the 2023 national matric examination results for the public and private assessment bodies.
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According to Rakometsi, the South African Police Service (SAPS) made the arrests over the past six months following Umalusi’s previous State of Readiness Media Briefing, which was held on 13 October 2023, informing the public of measures taken to ensure the authenticity and credibility of Umalusi certificates.
‘The first two suspects were arrested in Burgersfort in Limpopo on 27 October, one suspect was arrested in Pretoria in November, the next three were arrested on 20 November and the last five were nabbed on 13 December 2023, again in Burgersfort, Limpopo,’ said Rakometsi.
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In addition to these arrests, Rakometsi added that the Hawks arrested a Department of Higher Education and Training official on 11 December for allegedly issuing a diploma certificate in exchange for money. The official now faces charges of corruption.
The official’s court case was postponed and is set to take place on Friday, 19 January.
‘Police investigations are ongoing and Umalusi will continue to work closely with law enforcement agencies in whatever way possible to ensure fraudsters face the full might of the law,’ Rakometsi added.
The CEO emphasised that the quality assurance body ‘has got no business with fake certificates’, saying Umalusi has robust safeguards in place to protect and ensure that authentic certificates are issued to qualifying candidates.
He concluded this portion of his address by urging employers in both the public and private sectors to consider verifying the qualifications of current and prospective employees by making use of the verification agencies listed on Umalusi’s website.
Moving on to the national examinations, Rakometsi announced that, despite some deep concerns, the quality assurance body approved the release of the 2023 matric results.
Over one million candidates sat for the 2023 examinations in both the IEB and DBE, and the results are set to be released on Thursday (IBE) and Friday (NSC).
Rakometsi highlighted the areas of concern:
‘Firstly, we have previously cautioned members of the public against registering to write the examination at unaccredited private centres or institutions,’ the CEO said.
‘The second area of concern relates to printing errors or poor print quality in some of the question papers,’ he added.
In addition to an omission of a subscript on a formula in Physical Sciences papers and missing grid lines in North West’s science papers, there were major printing errors in both English and Afrikaans versions of the three Civil Technology specialisation papers in Limpopo that affected questions worth significant marks.
Rakometsi also outlined cultural and political errors that occurred in the Mathematical Literacy Paper 1 and Mandarin Paper 1.
‘Finally, Umalusi is concerned about the unresolved irregularities associated with the previous cycle of examinations, especially in the private college space involving the GETC: ABET examinations,’ he said.
‘At the same time, we are deeply concerned about the detected cases of group copying involving 945 candidates,’ Rokemetsi added before concluding.
‘Of this number, 763 cases (80.7%) cases were detected in KwaZulu-Natal and 164 (17.7%) in Mpumalanga. According to the report submitted, these are cases where the candidates displayed common answers and, in some cases, same wrong and right answers.’
Rakometsi said these cases are not yet resolved as the numbers are still being verified.
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Picture: @UmalusiSA / X
