Since 1997, there have been a number of national mandates and accountability structures in South Africa, established through the Department of Education (DoE) and the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) of the Council on Higher Education (CHE), which promote the development of service-learning courses.
In several documents produced by the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) (2006a; 2006b) service-learning is featured as a preferred strategy for the integration of community engagement into the curriculum, thus providing a strong impetus for higher education institutions to adopt this educational approach.