A PROMISE IS A PROMISE.

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.

  

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.