Note to Editors: This is an extract based on a speech delivered by DA Shadow Minister of Higher Education, Prof Belinda Bozzoli MP, during today’s debate on Higher Education Transformation in Parliament, 27 October 2015

ANC’s double betrayal of Higher Education

27 October 2015

Madam Speaker

Through you, I direct my comments to members of the ANC.

Today should be a day of accountability for what has happened to Higher Education. And your party is accountable.

When you first came into power you respected Universities. Your Higher Education Act of 1997 praises University autonomy, creativity and research. Our first three Presidents had a love of ideas and an admiration for intellectuals. 

But you also wanted to dominate Universities. It was part of your overall agenda of controlling the “commanding heights”.

But that pesky University autonomy was an obstacle. So you manipulated the appointments of Vice-Chancellors. Today you have an almost tame cohort of them. And you interfered in Councils. 

You did this with the support of your shock troops - the amalaitas of Sasco and Nehawu. You mobilised the pain and hardship of the poorest students and used them for your own ends – to build the ANC and to extend control over Universities. 

The student leaders were rewarded with government posts. But the shock troops themselves, the majority of poor students, remain poor.

You doubled the numbers of students in Universities. Worthy indeed. But you did so with no regard for quality of education. You used Universities as places where the youth could be parked and their energies channeled.

After the Malema-sponsored election of President Zuma, your respect for Universities vanished. The President thinks they are expensive, unpatriotic places full of “clever blacks”. Vice-Chancellors can be publically humiliated with barely a squeak from you. There is a whiff of the Cultural Revolution about. 

And funding? While you threw money at grandiose projects and the bill for corruption grew exponentially, the funding for Universities fell in real terms by 30%. 

Your Higher Education Act failed here. It did not define the levels at which universities should be funded.

You commissioned three formal enquiries into funding. All of them said this was a crisis waiting to happen. You ignored them. 

So Universities were subjected to constant protests, year in year out, mainly about funding. They included looting, vandalism, the burning of buildings and intimidation of staff and students. You could turn these protests on and off. Usually for a price from Universities. 

You encouraged the belief amongst poor students that Universities could solve all their problems; and inched further towards control over them each time. 

Every year, the universities became further degraded by these attacks on them. And the problems were always insoluble without more money. 

What a breath of fresh air “#FeesMustFall” has been. Students saw through these games. And suddenly protest was directed at you. 

You failed to rise to their challenge. 

You seem not to have any practical solutions to the short or long term problem. No mention of a new norm for the level of funding, let alone making up for past neglect. No pledge to find money elsewhere in your badly designed budget. 

Instead you have tried desperately to change the subject. The private sector must pay. Universities must pay. The Department must pay. SETAs must pay.

“We are victims of our successes”, says Minister Nzimande. Victims??? You are in charge! And have been for 20 years. 

You have failed to accept responsibility. 

Instead, you are busy restoring the old regime - Universities as places to be manipulated, despised and attacked; and Sasco as the natural holder of the right to protest, preferably violently. 

President Zuma hated every minute of his announcement. You are going to make Universities pay for government’s humiliation. In retribution you will subordinate Universities even further. You dislike the fact that no matter how much manipulation you use behind the scenes, or mayhem you cause, Universities have not bent fully to your will. 

And so you attack University autonomy – now a swearword in your circles. You encourage students to believe that this would be a solution. It would not. It will not magically supply more funding. It’s a millenarian dream, like all your dreams of nationalization. 

The Ugandan academic Mahmoud Mamdani said of Makerere University after independence: 

“the new state to stepped in as the guarantor of social justice. We celebrated, but not for long. Soon the state altered the mode of governance of universities; and we came to confront state-appointed Vice Chancellors, Deans and even Heads of Department. We then discovered the importance of University autonomy”. 

Decades later the Kampala Declaration set out to restore university autonomy. Fifty years later you want to repeat Uganda’s failed experiment.

The DA will do everything in its power to prevent the destruction and decay of Universities and protect their autonomy. 

Those who love education are disgusted at your thoughtless lack of care for these precious national assets. 

Issued by the DA 27 October 2015