The Eastern Cape Department of Education was born dysfunctional. In 1994, it inherited the bureaucracies of the former Transkei and Ciskei homeland education departments — notoriously corrupt and inefficient — merged with the Cape Education Department. The merger was never properly managed, resulting in duplicate systems, ghost employees, and administrative chaos that persisted for decades.
Scholar transport became the primary vehicle for corruption. The province's rural geography means hundreds of thousands of children must be transported to schools daily. The scholar transport budget — approximately R1.5 billion per year by the early 2020s — was captured by networks of politically connected transport operators. Contracts were awarded through corrupt procurement processes, with operators paying kickbacks to departmental officials. Some routes were entirely fictitious — "ghost routes" where no children were transported but operators were paid. On real routes, many operators used unroadworthy vehicles, leading to multiple fatal accidents involving schoolchildren.
Ghost teachers were another persistent problem. The payroll included teachers who had died, retired, or never existed. Their salaries were collected by departmental officials or their associates. Multiple attempts to clean the payroll were resisted by unions and political structures.
Infrastructure delivery was equally corrupt. The Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI) — a national programme to replace mud schools and unsafe structures, with the Eastern Cape being the primary beneficiary — was plagued by contractors who received payment for incomplete or defective work. By 2023, hundreds of school infrastructure projects in the Eastern Cape were incomplete, over budget, or abandoned.
The department consistently received qualified or adverse audit opinions from the Auditor-General. Irregular expenditure exceeded R1.5 billion for the 2022/23 financial year alone. The SIU investigated multiple contracts worth over R1 billion, but criminal accountability has been minimal.