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Student Receives £850,000 Grant Instead Of £85 And Promptly Spends It

Student Receives £850,000 Grant Instead Of £85 And Promptly Spends It

She's had her say on the events

Michael Minay

Michael Minay

We've all been there. The day the student loan comes in we live life like we're Floyd 'Money' Mayweather.

One month in and we're broke, crying into the remnants of the pizza from the night before as we miss yet another lecture through a combination of hangover and being too skint for the bus.

However, that's usually a couple of grand at most. For Sibongile Mani, 27, a student in South Africa, things were a little different - her student grant was boosted 10,000-fold, but now it's landed her in hot water.

She received £850,000 ($1.1 million) instead of her regular £85 ($110) allowance for food, and the blunder has seen her undergo a 'Cinderella-like' transformation.

Eyebrows were raised when her neat corn-row hairstyle was replaced with a Peruvian weave that costs £180 ($231) a time. She also began to wear designer outfits and bought a new iPhone 7.

Sibongile then enjoyed a life of £50 ($64) bottles of whisky, jetting herself and friends to exclusive parties across the country.

via GIPHY

Suspicions grew when a receipt from the local shop was found, indicating a remaining balance of £810,000 ($1.04m)and she was eventually outed by Samkelo Mqhayi, deputy branch secretary of the South African Students Congress (SASCO).

He told Herald Live: "She threw surprise birthday parties for her friends and showered them with expensive gifts and flew them to events where she bought the best seats.

"When the SPAR receipt was leaked showing a balance of R13.6m (£810,000) in her account I called NSFAS (National Students' Financial Aids Scheme) and the checked their records and confirmed that the initial amount was R14m (£850,000)."

She'd blown a staggering £666 ($857) per day - a huge amount for a South African resident.

via GIPHY

A fellow student added: "She went from a hard-up, humdrum run-of-the-mill student to one who was leading lavish lifestyle and seemed to have no bottom to her purse and lived the high life."

It's not so long ago that there were protests in South Africa for some students who were left without funding following shortages.

The student has been told that she will have to recover the money than she spent, and has been threatened with legal action, on a charge of theft.

In a post on Facebook on Wednesday night, Mani wrote: "My side of the story.

"Today my personal life has become a social media scandal, I have been named and shamed in public. Today I am a bad person, a person who has stolen the money of students."

She later added that she is saddened that her misfortune has been used to fuel political agenda in her own country. It also appears that her Facebook page has also been shut down.

Source: The Sun, Herald Live

Featured Image Credit: Twitter