For more than a decade, the Central Applications Clearing House (CACH) was the government’s safety net for matriculants who had no university or college place when the results came out. That safety net is gone. CACH did not run for the 2026 intake. As of 3 October 2026, the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) has announced no clearing service for 2027 entry. Each claim below carries the date we checked it.
Where things stand on 3 October 2026
- cach.ac.za shows one line: “CACH is suspended for the 2026 entry.” It has not been updated for 2027, and it offers no application form.
- cas.ac.za, the site of CACH’s replacement, shows one line: “The CAS Project is under review.” It has no portal, no clearing dates and no list of open spaces.
- The government services page on gov.za says that, from the 2026 academic year onwards, CACH “has been discontinued and replaced by the Central Application Service”. It gives one contact: a WhatsApp chat line, 081 308 4196.
- DHET’s own CAS page is out of date. It still describes CACH as a January-to-March online service meant to stop walk-ins, and it reports progress only on a draft CAS Bill published in 2019.
We searched sanews.gov.za, gov.za and dhet.gov.za for a newer statement on 3 October 2026. We found nothing after January 2026 that sets out how unplaced 2027 applicants will be helped.
How CACH ended: the January 2026 announcements
The change came days before the 2025 matric results were released. On 14 January 2026, SAnews reported that Minister Buti Manamela was urging prospective students to use the Central Application Service (CAS). He described CACH as a short-term measure that would be discontinued from the 2026 academic year. On 19 January 2026, a second SAnews report confirmed that CACH would not be implemented “for the Class of 2025 and beyond”. It added that university and college capacity cannot meet demand. That same day, SAnews ran a feature listing CAS’s four services: career information, referral for career guidance and counselling, a centralised application, and an application clearing service.
On paper, the clearing service does what CACH used to do. According to the official CAS learner guide, applicants’ verified results and study preferences go to institutions that still have space. An applicant who meets the minimum requirements gets an offer by SMS and email and has three days to accept or reject it. But that guide was written for the third pilot year, which was entry in 2025. A website that now says “under review” cannot run it.
University pages that still send you to CACH
Some university pages were never updated. As of 3 October 2026, the University of the Western Cape’s admission support page still tells unsuccessful applicants to contact CACH by WhatsApp or USSD. The University of Pretoria’s FAQ still answers “How do I apply at CACH?”. UniZulu’s walk-in statements from 2018 and 2019 point to CACH too. Ignore those instructions, because the service they describe does not exist. North-West University’s FAQ is more current: it sends late applicants to CAS instead.
What a learner without a place should actually do
Do not plan on a government clearing house in January 2027 unless DHET announces one. Use the routes that exist now. Several universities still accept 2027 applications in October and November, and some run their own January processes for courses with space. The KwaZulu-Natal Central Applications Office also keeps taking late applications, at a higher fee from 1 November 2026, as our CAO late applications guide explains. Our status list for all 26 public universities has a step-by-step plan for anyone who has missed every deadline. NSFAS applications close on 31 October 2026.
You can still message the CAS WhatsApp line, 081 308 4196, for guidance. That is the number government published in January 2026, but we cannot confirm who answers it now. We will check cas.ac.za, cach.ac.za and DHET’s media statements again in early December 2026, and again on matric results day in January 2027.
Is CAS the same as the CAO?
No. The CAO is a separate, working application office for DUT, MUT, UKZN, UniZulu and many KwaZulu-Natal colleges. CAS is DHET’s national project, and its website currently shows “under review”.