By Lebone Rodah Mosima
Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training Dr Nomusa Dube-Ncube has called on NGOs and the private sector to support Higher Health’s Comfort Rooms, saying a coordinated response to gender-based violence (GBV), mental health challenges and HIV is essential to student wellbeing.
Dube-Ncube was speaking on Thursday at the launch of the first Comfort Room in the Post-School Education and Training (PSET) sector, held in partnership with Higher Health and Ekurhuleni East TVET College at its Springs Campus in Johannesburg.
She described the Comfort Room as a safe space where students can seek support without fear of judgement.
“Higher Health has built something simple, and therefore something powerful: a room. Not a policy document. Not a committee. A room – four walls, a door that closes, and people inside trained to listen without judgement,” she said.
Dube-Ncube said the rooms will provide access to Survivor Clubs for students who have experienced GBV, Transforming Mentalities Clubs, peer forums for young people living with HIV, mental health conversations, self-risk assessments and referral pathways.
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She said the initiative is peer-led, allowing young people to support others who may be more comfortable speaking to someone with similar experiences.
“This room is not an island. No single institution can carry gender-based violence, HIV and mental illness alone,” she said.
“The Comfort Room is where a student first finds the courage to speak, is received with care, and is then walked – not merely referred – into the nearest Thuthuzela Care Centre or the appropriate department for further support.”
She said Higher Health, together with the department, is working to establish Comfort Rooms at universities, TVET colleges and Community Education and Training (CET) colleges across the country.
Dube-Ncube called on NGOs to contribute their counselling and GBV-response expertise, while urging the private sector to fund Comfort Rooms, sponsor counsellors and donate furniture and connectivity.
“Government and Higher Health cannot carry this alone either. I issue a clarion call today, particularly to our NGOs and the private sector: this is your moment to step forward,” she said.
She said skills development must be accompanied by mental wellbeing, arguing that producing technically skilled graduates who struggle with their mental health would undermine the country’s skills revolution.
“Skills and wellbeing are not two projects. They are one,” she said.
Dube-Ncube said more than 850,000 self-risk assessments had been completed across GBV and mental health programmes, demonstrating that young people respond honestly when given appropriate opportunities to speak.
She called on universities, TVET and CET colleges to introduce confidential wellbeing screening during the first week of students’ academic lives, alongside registration and orientation.
“Catch it at year one, and you very often prevent the crisis of year three,” she said.
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She also described the Comfort Room as an important human space in an increasingly digital and isolated world.
Dube-Ncube said she hoped that within five years, Comfort Rooms would be as common on South African campuses as libraries and would be free from stigma.
She said the success of the initiative would ultimately be measured not by its launch, but by whether students felt safe enough to use it.
“But 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,” she said.
“Let us build a post-school system where that choice is always made a little easier.”
