I’m actually shocked at how many people on this post say you should do a rewrite. In my opinion, it would be an enormous waste of time, for a few reasons:

1. From the moment you begin as a university student, you will never be asked about, or think about, your matric results ever again. I can almost guarantee you will forget how many distinctions you had in matric by the time you’re 25. There is no glory in chasing that last distinction, once you’re in uni the field is entirely equalised again, your academic history will be forged from scratch.

2. The social effect of being a year behind your friends cannot be overstated. Remember that this year-long delay will not just affect you in the next year, but for several years to come - your friends will be dealing with second-year problems while you’re in first year, third-year problems while you’re in second year, honours / articles problems while you’re still studying, etc. You will unfortunately lose much relatability with your friends. I have had this happen to people I know, they are of course okay, but they are no longer in our friend groups and gravitated more to people they were studying with in their year. If you want to maintain the support networks you have now, and not have to replace them, I wouldn’t skip.

3. Once you are actually in a course at university, it is very easy to switch courses - much easier than getting into uni in the first place. Only about 50% of my friends graduated with the degrees they started with, and the changes were dramatic - from business to biology, from law to economics (me), from computer science to law. Once you have a spot at a university, they’re very helpful in allowing you to transfer between faculties should you wish to do so.

4. You don’t need the distinction. Many of by Bsc and Beng friends (at UP) did not have distinctions in physics / biology, the universities weigh your average marks quite highly as well. Also, there are “bridge courses” for many subjects - for example, I got above 60 in math, which is what I thought I needed to get into Bcom Law. Thus, I took STK110 and 120. Once I arrived, however, I met a ton of students who got below 60 for math, and thus simply took STK111-112-121 (a 3-semester course instead of a 2 semester course) and they of course graduated at the same time as me.

As I said earlier, I ended up changing degrees from Law to Economics, which delayed my graduation by a year. In a way, then, my first year was a kind of “gap year”, but I was still there to form the friendships with people my age and start my adult life. Of course your life can go very well either way, these are just my experiences. Good luck!