Higher Education and Training Deputy Minister Dr Nomusa Dube-Ncube has called for the expansion of safe, accessible and stigma-free support spaces across South Africa’s post-school education and training sector (Pset).
Image: Higher Education and Training Deputy Minister Dr Nomusa Dube-Ncube |
@SAgovnewsDube-Ncube made the call at the national launch of Higher Health’s first comfort room at Ekurhuleni East Tvet College’s Springs Campus on Thursday.
Increasing need for psychosocial support
The comfort room is designed to provide students with a safe environment where they can speak openly, seek assistance and access support for challenges including gender-based violence (GBV), mental health, HIV and other psychosocial difficulties.
Dube-Ncube said the need for such spaces was underscored by the number of young people requiring psychosocial support.
According to Higher Health, approximately 394,000 GBV self-risk assessments and about 458,000 mental health self-risk assessments have been completed, with close to 189,000 young people identified as needing or actively seeking psychosocial support.
“Those are not statistics. Those are students,” Dube-Ncube said, adding that behind the numbers were young people carrying challenges they may never have spoken about.
Simple but powerful intervention
She said the comfort room offered a simple but powerful intervention by creating a physical space where students could find people trained to listen without judgment.
“Stigma survives in silence, and the comfort room creates a space where young people can speak,” the Deputy Minister said.
The space will host initiatives including survivor clubs for students who have experienced GBV, transforming mentalities clubs aimed at promoting reflection and behavioural change, and peer forums for young people living with HIV.
It will also provide mental health conversations, self-risk assessments and referral pathways to appropriate support services.
Dube-Ncube said the peer-led model is particularly important, as young people are often more willing to seek assistance from people they can relate to and who have walked similar paths.
She stressed, however, that the comfort room will not replace existing support structures.
“No single institution can carry gender-based violence, HIV and mental illness alone.”
The initiative will complement the work of the South African Police Service, the Departments of Social Development and Health, and non-governmental organisations involved in supporting students.
For cases of sexual violence, the comfort room is designed to serve as a campus-based extension of the Thuthuzela Care Centre model, providing a space where a student can first find the courage to speak before being supported and connected to appropriate services.
Expansion
Dube-Ncube said the Department of Higher Education and Training and Higher Health plan to establish Comfort Rooms across universities, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (Tvet) colleges and Community Education and Training (CET) colleges.
“This is wrap-around support in its truest form: a continuous circle of concern, care and comfortable conversation that follows a student until they are whole again,” Dube-Ncube said.
The Deputy Minister also called on non-governmental organisations and the private sector to support the expansion of the initiative.
She urged non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to partner with government and bring their counselling and GBV response expertise into the comfort rooms, while calling on businesses and private higher education institutions to contribute resources, counselling services, furniture and connectivity.
Dube-Ncube linked the initiative to the broader national focus on skills development, saying student well-being and skills development could not be treated as separate priorities.
“A skills revolution that produces brilliant technicians with broken spirits is not the revolution we were promised. Skills and wellbeing are not two projects. They are one,” the Deputy Minister said.
She also called on universities, Tvet and CET colleges to consider introducing confidential wellbeing screening during the first week of a student’s academic journey.
The Deputy Minister said the more than 850,000 GBV and mental health self-risk assessments completed through Higher Health demonstrated that young people are willing to speak when asked the right questions at the right time.
“If we can screen a first-year student’s academic readiness, we can screen their emotional readiness too. Catch it at year one, and you very often prevent the crisis of year three.”
Responding to challenges
Dube-Ncube said the comfort room also responds to the growing challenges of social isolation in an increasingly digital world.
She said young people need spaces where they can engage with one another face-to-face and speak honestly about their challenges.
“The comfort room, particularly in an age of screens, is a deliberately human space in an increasingly digital world,” she said.
Dube-Ncube hopes that within five years, comfort rooms will become as common on South African campuses as libraries.
She also welcomed the participation of 150 Ekurhuleni East Tvet College students in Higher Health’s one-day Civic Education and Voter Registration Programme ahead of the 2026 Local Government Elections.
The Deputy Minister said the true success of the comfort room will not be measured by its launch, but by whether students felt able to walk through its doors and seek help.
“The true opening of this room will not happen with scissors and ribbon. It will happen the first time a student, alone and afraid, chooses to walk through that door instead of walking past it,” Dube-Ncube said.
