SA students languish in Russia as R63m bursary scheme fails

More than 200 Mpumalanga students sent to Russia to study medicine, engineering and aviation have been left hungry, homeless and humiliated by a R63-million bursary scheme that collapsed under greed and incompetence.

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Over the past nine years, the provincial government has poured millions into a programme meant to build the province's brightest minds. Instead, it buried their hopes.

Two students died of natural causes while pursuing their education there, 16 have dropped out, and dozens more have faced eviction, hunger and despair as government payments vanished into a maze of middlemen and forged invoices.

According to a report tabled before the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), the Mpumalanga Department of Education admitted it has since 2016 sent hundreds of students to the Russian Federation to study critical skills.

But what began as an international education dream soon devolved into one of the province's most expensive scandals.