Most South African universities use two examiners for a Master's dissertation and three examiners for a PhD thesis.
Some universities only use external examiners (ie. not from the same university) but some will allow one internal examiner (someone from the same university or even from the same department) provided that the internal examiner has not been involved with or even exposed to the student's work.
For PhD theses, typically, at least one of the examiners must be "international" (ie. not from South Africa).
The student's supervisor (or supervisors) is not one of the examiners but he/she is often asked to write a report on the supervision process.
In most cases, the examination process is purely based on an assessment of the quality of the work as reflected by the thesis or dissertation -- there is no viva. Some universities may require candidates to give a presentation of their work before or during the examination process.
Some universities require the publication of at least one journal article as part of the PhD.
Some guidelines for examiners of Master's Dissertations and Doctoral Theses are given below. These are things that you should bear in mind when completing your thesis or dissertation.
Typically examiners are asked to recommend one of the following:
Very, very few of the theses or dissertations ever submitted fall into the first category.
Recommendations for improvements are relatively common.
Different universities handle this in slightly different ways. Typically the student works with the supervisor to address the comments of the examiners and produces a revised thesis or dissertation and document detailing how the comments have been addressed. The supervisor is required to state explicitly that they are satisfied with the changes. The changes then need to be approved through the university structures. Once this has been done then the student's thesis or dissertation in "accepted".
Recommendation 3 unfortunately does happen and can be devastating for a student.
The student typically has to make big changes to their document and may even be required to do extra research. They are typically given a year to do this revision. Then the revised document must be submitted for examination.
Recommendation 4 is the "end of the line".
The student gets no second chance and if they want to do the degree they would have to start from the beginning with a new topic.
I consider it my job as a supervisor is to try to advise and guide my students so that they end up in category 2 and failing that in category 3.
I do not, however, have much control over the process. It is the student's degree and they make decisions about which of my advice to use, which to use partially and which to ignore. The amount of effort and care that students put into the work and the document is also their responsibility.
At some point, I am required to sign a document that says that I am prepared to allow the student to submit their thesis or dissertation. Normally I would only do so if I am relatively confident that the student will get an "improvements" recommendation. Sometimes, however, students feel that they are ready to submit and "pressurise" their supervisors to allow them to submit. If one of my students pressurises me and I do sign the form then I will explicitly tell the student what I think are still problems with their work.
In addition, I do not have any influence with the examiners. I get to recommend examiners but the final examiners are appointed by the College/Faculty. The examiners apply their minds to the student's work and make their own recommendations.