Speech by Belinda Bozzoli MP, DA Shadow Minister for Higher Education and Training, in the debate on the budget vote for the Department of Higher Education and Training, 17 May 2018
The ANC's conservative approach is blocking the development of South Africa's higher education system
A lot has changed in higher education in a year. We have a new minister, a budget expanded by R57bn over the medium term, and a student body that has won major concessions on fees and so on.
But will this mean that the ANC government will provide a better higher education system than the one we already have? The answer is no.
There are two reasons for this: the ANC is incompetent and the ANC is conservative.
Jacob Zuma's hasty decision to extend free higher education to all students from families earning less than R350,000 per year could not be implemented in the time given – basically a month.
So thousands of naively optimistic students were led to believe that they would be funded, but many, almost halfway through the year, have still not received the funds.
Some people had to beg for food. Some have been thrown out of their residence.
Some have never found accommodation – they are sleeping in corridors and libraries. Textbooks cannot be purchased. Many people are walking for hours to reach their universities or colleges due to lack of transport funds. Universities and colleges have been closed due to protests over these facts.
NSFAS blames universities and colleges. They blame NSFAS. The students hold both of them guilty. Our ANC-dominated portfolio committee refused to address the issue directly and the Minister asked us to be patient.
This is typical of the ANC – its imperialistic attitude towards the common people and the Parliament that represents them. They are cared for in theory and by and large, but when it comes to the daily details of their real lives, they are neglected, even treated with disdain.
Zuma's decision would add R57bn, over the next three years, to the national budget, which is already struggling with economic stagnation, ineffective tax collection and rising civil service costs.
The real cost of higher education and inflation rates are so high, and plans for a 70% increase in the sector to 1.7 million university students over the next few years so enormous, that there is a generalized fear across the sector that funding students so generously is unsustainable.
But the ANC avoids facing the long-term consequences of its short-term, populist decisions.
Minister, what will happen in four years when student funding needs have almost tripled? Will even more money be taken from all the other departments like Basic Education to pay for it?
How do we manage students' frustration when they learn they have to pay for their own funding? Then who will handle the apocalypse?
At the same time, the institutions themselves will be more marginalized than ever. The administration of the department is barely adequate. Community education and training colleges, designed to teach skills to half a million people, remain inactive.
Old and ineffective TVET colleges are never reformed. Failure and drop-out rates are very high.
Top universities today may maintain their reputations for excellence, but they struggle to cope with inadequate funding, while our best matriculants move out of the country to study.
Weak universities are unable to provide proper accommodation, good teaching and a stable, corruption-free learning environment.
While our counterparts in China, India, Ghana and Kenya have committed themselves to a 21st century vision for universities, South Africa has been stymied by the conservative ANC, which wants to keep things more or less as they are, introducing little reforms here and there and a little crisis management when necessary.
Yes, the ANC is fundamentally conservative.
The ANC also suffers from a severe case of Tall Poppy Syndrome, uncomfortable with achievements that deviate from the norm – especially if the achievers are minorities.
The government has little idea how to modernize our stagnant, underfunded system. While China invests billions of dollars in the most advanced research, teaching and infrastructure, the ANC leaves our institutions unstable, narrow and stagnant.
The much-vaunted Fourth Industrial Revolution is about to leave us behind, as we have barely managed the first and second revolutions. Little hope is offered to the 9.5 million South Africans who can't find a job or have stopped looking.
South African higher education may soon disappear. Urgent change is needed and the ANC cannot deliver it. DA can do it. We believe in modernization, academic excellence, institutional differentiation and responsible and credible administration.
We will not leave students in the dark about what is happening to them and we will not allow our institutions to sink into mediocrity.
We want our higher education system to move rapidly into the 21st century and we know how to do that. The ANC does not.