Dr. Blade Nzimande
announced amid the chaotic #Feesmustfall fiasco that, only the poor and the
missing middle whatever will be exempted from anything to do with paying
tertiary fees. We must remember that Blade Nzimande is the Minister of High
Education and Training department of South Africa, a department which in my
opinion is doing a lot more than nothing really. This department is very
ignorant and often loses its constitutional obligations to the people its
suppose to serve.
First it was the fracas
they and their deputy minister who goes by the name of Mduduzi Manana caused
with the campaign and promotion of Artisan as a career of choice to FETs. This
so-called promotion geared towards FET colleges caused a lot of mayhem which
these institutions were unprepared for and didn’t deserve. The promises of
immediate employment and a must-pursued career misled a lot of our young people
who took this call and swelled all FETs in a hope to lend a job after
employment. Today a lot of those youngsters are relinquishing at every robot
begging for any work. Manana and his department are as quiet as lizards, and nowhere
to be found.
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| Students protests |
The department of High
Education and Training has said nor done anything substantial to our country,
instead it continues to cruz through chaos after chaos. In came Minister
Nzimande, who spectacularly bragged to poor students who are begging for an ear
to listen to that fees will increase come 2017. The minister failed like Manana
to elaborate how students who are considered poor and missing middle class will
be determined and identified amid the mass of tertiary entry students. Today
students are protesting non-stop demanding what was once promised to them.
The governing party
promised students free education. This promise was made repeatedly without
blinking by the ANC, now when it’s time for the party to deliver they tell
students and parents, free education is unforeseeable, expensive and the
country has no money. Yet we have politicians throwing departmental monies into
a sea of events, business class trips to overseas, tenders that have nothing to
do with our country and a rampant corruption up to the president, who was once denounced
by the highest court in the land as a law breaker and trustworthy. If all this
weren’t the activities of our politicians, free education would be possible,
foreseeable and implementable. It is absurd to question the moral actions of
our students when they want the governing party to deliver on its promise. I
don’t condone violence, nor the actions of some protesting students in various
campuses but these students’ cries are legitimate and warrant an ear which
Nzimande and Co failed to provide. It’s the rights of students not accept
anything announced by Nzimande and its Nzimande’s right to do his job the way
he did. But students will not stop protesting until their demands are met.
Whether this government can afford it or not, a promise is a promise and
students were promised free education. Blade Nzimande’s 8% capped fee increase
will never go unchallenged; the government needs to do something urgently if it
wants to contain the situation currently brewing in our major campuses. One
thing is for sure, government must deliver on its promise it made for free
education, period.
