When it came to discussing the hot topic of student protests over university fees South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan must have been at least a little relieved on Wednesday to be joined by two of the government’s big guns, at least as far as the fees crisis is concerned.
The Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande and the Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe, who is also the convener of the ministerial task team appointed to help normalise the situation at universities, joined Gordhan at a press briefing on the medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS).
After noting that the government was not deaf to the students’ concerns about the hardships and uncertainty they faced, Gordhan emphasised that there was no room for violence in the process.
Protesting students might be disappointed to hear that Radebe reminded the media that the main focus of the task team was to “bring about normality at institutions of higher education”.
The mic was then passed (so to speak) to Nzimande, whom Gordhan playfully described as “quite appropriately sitting on my far left”.
Nzimande almost lost his Big Gun status when his answer to an early question was that he didn’t have anything to say. He did, however, recover to make the point that a multi-disciplinary and multi-pronged approach was necessary to tackle the problem.
Money alone, he said, was not going to resolve all of the challenges in the sector.
Also, he said, South Africa’s higher education problems would not be solved by focusing all post-school efforts on universities. For one thing, he said, the country needed a college sector that was three to four times as big as the university sector.
Another problem he pointed to was “the inadequate role of employers”. Nzimande said the education authorities needed a much firmer partnership with industry.
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