MPs call for urgent action on dental technicians

Words: Liezl Human / GroundUp

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Parliament has recommended urgent mediation to end a seven-year standoff between the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and the South African Dental Technicians Council (SADTC), which has left dental technology students unable to complete their training.

CPUT and the council, which regulates dental technicians, had reached an impasse about new facilities at CPUT for dental students. They are also stuck in an accreditation dispute going back to 2019.

In a petition to Parliament in June, students said their academic programme had been disrupted since May 2025.

Marlene Bezuidenhout, CPUT head of department for dental sciences, told Parliament’s petitions committee on Wednesday that the university had to vacate the premises for students’ practical training at Tygerberg Hospital in May 2025.

A new site had been bought in Tygervalley, but extensive work was needed on it.

In the meantime, students had been placed in laboratories on the CPUT Bellville campus to finish their practical training.

In October 2025, the council had visited the laboratories and recommended that practical training cease immediately. Council president Peter Owen told Parliament that the training laboratories were ‘illegal’, not conforming to proper standards, and a ‘health hazard,’

Students said in their petition that they could not complete the 2025 year, and when they returned in 2026 the new building was not finished.

CPUT spokesperson Lauren Kansley told GroundUp that five students had not been able to graduate in 2025 and 42 students could not progress.

She said the intake shortfall is 25 students per year for the past three years.

‘Continued delays in the resumption of the programme poses a pending oral health crisis for the country,’ she said.

Kansley said the new dental laboratories in Tygervalley are now fully compliant.

Owen told the committee the new laboratories would be inspected on 5 October. But, he said, even if the laboratories are compliant, students could return only if a longstanding dispute with regards to registering students with the council is resolved.

Accreditation dispute

The accreditation dispute dates back to 2019, when the council introduced a joint-assessment exit exam as a condition for accreditation of dental students.

But CPUT, the Durban University of Technology and the Tshwane University of Technology launched a case against the council in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria earlier this year challenging this ‘unfair’ condition. They are also asking for a court order requiring the council to register 159 students who completed their qualifications but are not registered with the council because of the dispute.

Bezuidenhout told Parliament the council’s exit assessment constituted ‘overreach,’

She said CPUT wanted the council to register the university, as it had done before 2019, and ‘observe university assessment processes and not interfere,’

Owen said the council was not just an ‘observer’ and it had statutory authority to withdraw or suspend approval of education or training when it was not satisfactory.

He said the point of the final exit exam was to* ‘raise the standards, which were appallingly low, which we discovered in 2019,’*

Committee chair Dianne Kohler Barnard said this was a ‘catch-22 situation,’ *‘We have a situation requiring a choice between two equally difficult, even mutually exclusive options, and the students find themselves in a lose-lose situation,’ *she said.

On 15 September, the Western Cape High Court dismissed CPUT’s application for an urgent interdict to prevent the council seeking consent from the Minister of Health to suspend its dental technology programme, pending the matter in the Gauteng High Court between the three universities and the council.

The council had given notice to CPUT in August that it would approach the minister to suspend the programme. The court noted that no decision to suspend the programme had yet been made by the council.

Addressing the committee, deputy director-general for university education Thandi Lewin said, ‘We’re very concerned about this situation and very concerned about the students. We’re not sure the legal route will resolve the long-term challenges,’

Kohler Barnard recommended that the department intervene urgently and find a mediator ‘to sort this mess out,’

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Picture: Ashraf Hendricks / GroundUp

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