Key facts
- Status
- Check with the provider
- Provider
- Competition Commission South Africa
- Field of study
- Law, Commerce, Information Technology
- Study level
- University
- Last checked
- September 2026
No cadet or internship intake is open: the Competition Commission's graduate portal listed no vacancies on 27 September 2026 and no dates are published for the next intake.
VerifiedThe Competition Commission, the Pretoria regulator that investigates cartels, reviews mergers and runs market inquiries, trains new graduates through a two-year Cadet Programme and takes university and college students on a six-month work-integrated internship. Both run from the same careers page at compcom.co.za, but they serve different people: the cadet route is for graduates who have finished their qualification, while the internship is for students who still need workplace experience before their institution will let them graduate.
Neither route had an open call on 27 September 2026. The graduate recruitment portal showed no vacancies, and the Commission has not published dates for its next intake.
A 24-month cadetship in competition law and economics
In its 2023/24 annual report the Commission describes the Cadet Training Programme as a 24-month structured pathway for “inexperienced graduates”. Cadets rotate across the Commission’s divisions and work under mentors and technical coaches on live matters, so they finish with applied experience in the kind of work the regulator does every day. The report is candid about the purpose: the programme exists to replenish the Commission’s own talent pool with practitioners who already know the work.
That work is dominated by two professions. The same report counts 77 lawyers and 62 economists among a staff of 255, with the remaining 86 employees in other skills. The cadetship has widened with that third group in mind. The Commission’s banner for the 2026 Cadet Programme, uploaded to its website in September 2025, listed six fields:
- Economics
- Legal
- Finance
- Information Technology
- Human Capital Management
- Strategy, Policy and Governance
The banner invited graduates “who meet the criteria” and who want to build skill in analysing complex economic or legal questions, but the criteria themselves (degree class, age limit, citizenship) were not printed on it. No stipend or salary figure appears on any Commission page we checked.
The bootcamp before the interview
What sets this programme apart is how the Commission chooses cadets. For the 2024 intake it advertised widely and reached out to tertiary institutions across the country, including ones in marginalised areas that recruiters often skip. The response was large enough that it narrowed the field to the top 50 candidates and then ran a bootcamp for them before any interviews took place.
The bootcamp modules covered generational differences at work, self-awareness, career planning, personal finance, critical thinking, problem-solving and collaboration. Only after it did interview panels assess each shortlisted graduate for a particular functional stream. Seventeen graduates joined in the 2024 intake, and the Commission notes that a large share came from provinces other than Gauteng. The 2026 banner confirms the bootcamp has stayed: shortlisted graduates attend one designed to strengthen workplace readiness and interview skills.
How often the Commission takes cadets
The Commission’s own pages give two different pictures. The annual report calls the cadetship a “biennial initiative”, and the intakes on record fit that pattern: a 2024 intake recruited during 2023, then a 2026 intake advertised in September 2025. The careers page, however, still says the Commission admits “an average of 24 trainees” a year and sometimes renews current trainees’ contracts on the strength of their performance. Readers should treat the timing of the next cadet call as unconfirmed until the Commission advertises it.
The six-month internship for students who must finish practical training
The second route is smaller and shorter. The Commission admits 26 learners a year into a six-month internship, with intakes in January and June. It is aimed at students whose diploma or degree requires a period of work experience before they can graduate, which makes it a fit for programmes with a compulsory work-integrated learning component. The Commission does not list which qualifications it takes, what interns are paid, or when each intake is advertised.
Two portals and a CV database
Applications do not go by email. The “Apply” buttons on the Commission’s careers page lead to two recruitment sites run on the Direct Hire platform:
- Graduates: the graduate opportunities portal, which on 27 September 2026 said there were no jobs available and offered a CV upload so the Commission can contact candidates when a suitable role opens.
- Internships and other posts: the Competition Commission Careers site, where you register a profile and filter vacancies by type, including a “Graduate” category.
The Commission’s offices are at 77 Meintjies Street, Sunnyside, Pretoria, open Monday to Friday from 07:30 to 17:00. General enquiries go to 012 394 3200 or ccsa@compcom.co.za.
Who this suits and where else to look
The cadetship suits law and economics graduates who want regulatory work, plus finance, IT, HR and policy graduates who are happy to apply those skills inside a competition authority. Students still paying for a law or economics degree can look at the site’s law bursaries and commerce bursaries. For another public-sector internship built around economic policy, see the NEDLAC internship programme.
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