The government-funded National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) in South Africa provides financial assistance to low-income university students. Recognising that a just higher education system is one that ensures that a student’s background does not predetermine both their chance of gaining access to, and successfully completing a qualification, we use administrative data to evaluate the extent to which NSFAS has improved higher education participation and affected student performance in universities. We compare the demographics of NSFAS recipients to those of the overall student population, and examine the race and gender composition across the distribution of NSFAS award sizes. We also examine how the financial aid scheme affected student performance as measured by both the subject pass rate and the likelihood of passing all subjects. Our results reveal that over the period 2000–2012, NSFAS has successfully increased the number of recipients and targeted historically disadvantaged individuals and women. Moreover, there appears to be a positive relationship between award size and student performance. Turning to institutional differences, relative to their share of the overall student population, African students were over-represented among NSFAS beneficiaries at historically white institutions (HWIs) and merged institutions created by the merger of historically black institutions (HBIs) with HWIs, and proportionally represented at HBIs. Women were slightly over-represented as NSFAS beneficiaries at HWIs and HBIs, and proportionally represented at merged institutions. Further, the results suggest that there is a positive relationship between NSFAS award size and student performance and that this relationship is strongest at HBIs and weakest at HWIs.