Public servants and other interested professionals invited to enrol for online senior management programme during lockdown

The Minister for the Public Service and Administration, Mr Senzo Mchunu has urged persons who are keen to join the public service senior management service (SMS) to enrol for the compulsory online Nyukela Pre-Entry into the SMS programme run by the National School of Government (NSG), during this period of the national lockdown.

Any individual (in the public or private sector) intending to apply for a Senior Management position in the public sector after 31 March 2020 should enrol for the course. This also applies to those senior managers within the public sector who wish to progress within the Senior Management Service. Nobody will be appointed as a senior manager in the public service without having completed this compulsory online course with effect from tomorrow, 1st April 2020.

In the 2019 State of the Nation Address His Excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that in order to strengthen the capacity of the state, the NSG would introduce a suite of compulsory courses, covering areas such as ethics and anti-corruption, senior management training, supply chain management and the deployment of managers to the coal face to strengthen service delivery amongst others. The Nyukela Pre-SMS course forms part of the suite. The NSG forms part of the portfolio of Minister Mchunu.

“President Ramaphosa has declared a national state of disaster and issued a directive that the whole country should go into lockdown until the 16th of April in order to flatten the curve and arrest the spread of the deadly Corona Virus in the country. Persons in and outside the public service who are keen to join the SMS are urged to enrol for the Nyukela course during this period while staying at home observing the Presidential lockdown directive,” said Minister Mchunu.

The NSG trains about 4000 public servants annually at its premises in Sunnyside, Pretoria and 40 000 in external venues in other cities nationwide.  

Interested persons should visit the National School of Government website on