Of the many cruel and unkind acts the ANC has committed against the very people whose interests it purports to represent, the cruellest must be the shambles that passes for education in this country. Promising to create 5 million new jobs to the ever growing mass of unemployed people was pretty mean spirited but adults are used to the wily ways of politicians and surely not even the most gullible ANC voter believed that 5 million jobs could be created out of thin air. But cynically rigging the education system and thereby putting in jeopardy the futures of children born into a post 1994 democratic South Africa is a veritable kick in the teeth for those who put their faith in the ANC eighteen years ago.
Last week struggle veteran Mamphela Ramphele accused the government of deception when it boasted of a matric pass rate of 70.2%. She went further and made the comment that education under the ANC was now worse than it was during the apartheid era. Another leading educationalist Prof Jonathan Jansen, the rector of Free State University, has long held similar views and written about them and there are other black educationalists who have also felt emboldened enough to speak out and risk upsetting the "ruling party" as the ANC prefer to be known.
The question is, do the ANC give a damn? Probably not. The obvious reason for the 70.2% matric pass rate is to make the ANC look good and to justify the fact that we have not one but two education ministers, both of them hideously unsuited to the task as it happens. And if kids think they have done well by just passing matric then they'll grow up a lot happier and believe that the ANC has waved a magic wand and given them what apartheid never could....dignity.
Unfortunately it's all smoke and mirrors stuff though because those faux matric results no longer have any credibility and equip learners for nothing but the scrap heap. If someone with one of these dodgy matric passes does manage to get into university thanks to some demographic fast tracking (courtesy of more interference from the ruling party) they'll be without the literacy and numeracy skills needed to make a decent go of it.
Presumably that would be the cue for champagne socialist Blade Nzimande, our luxury car driving minister for higher education, to demand that universities give more previously disadvantaged persons degrees on pain of being labelled racists if they refuse.
Many of our universities have become a joke internationally and rank well down the list of credible institutions of tertiary learning. It's telling that our Chinese and Indian business partners choose to send their children to US or UK universities rather than to South African universities. It would be unkind to single out any particular institution but suffice to say that universities that had an excellent reputation twenty years ago are now regarded with disdain by serious educationalists. The degrees they hand out simply don't cut it in the big wide world.