Confirmed: Minister Nzimande will make the poor pay for #FeesMustFall

12 November 2015

The DA has confirmed that Minister Nzimande’s plan to bridge the shortfall in university funding next year comes at an outrageously high societal price. 

The DA is in possession of the plan. It is clear that it will cost poor students at historically disadvantaged universities and TVET colleges the most. 

Of the R1.9 billion the Minister has sourced to bridge the gap, R361 million will be plundered from the Historically Disadvantaged Institutions (HDI) development grant and R1.2 billion will be taken from SETAs. 

The Department of Higher Education (DHET) has heeded the DA’s warning that universities need money now and not only in the new financial year. It will transfer approximately R1 billion in this financial year to Universities. This may help save some HDIs from going bankrupt before the start of the next financial year on 1 April 2016. The remaining R900 million will be allocated in the next financial year.  Unpardonably, only R300 million of this will be coming from Treasury, which has until now been happy to give the impression that it has provided substantial support for the plan. 

The HDI grant is an allocation of about R410 million per year (of R2.5 billion over the next five years) for developing systems for improved management and administration at HDIs. These programmes are sorely needed – the University of Fort Hare (UFH), for example, has been brought the brink of bankruptcy by poor financial management and requires urgent intervention. It will be cut. 

- The SETA surplus, which itself arose from poor management and negligent underspending at SETAs, had already been earmarked to fund important projects in the TVET sector. The R1.2 billion was slotted to fund:

- 20 Apprenticeship Centres across the country at TVET Colleges; 

- 3 966 Apprenticeships in the next three years; and

- 500 TVET College lecturing positions.

These key projects will now be scrapped to address the shortfall.

When confronted in Parliament about the probability of there being opportunity costs should the funds be drawn from the HDI projects rather than Treasury itself, the Minister reacted indignantly, saying that there would be no prejudice to poor students. He claimed that the projects would get the money back next year when a new budget is considered. This was a entirely disingenuous. The Minister is in no position to make such guarantees and it is clear that government has no intention of paying these funds back in the new year. 

The plundering of SETA surpluses will also continue into the new financial year, and possibly into subsequent years, as Universities will carry the cost of the 0% fee increase far into the future. 

The Minister tried to play the hero when misleading Parliament and the people of South Africa. He knew all along that the poor would be paying the bill for Zuma’s promise of a 0% increase in fees in 2016. 

Given this revelation the DA will continue with its amendment to the budget. That is the only way to ensure that the money is found without burdening the poor.

The DA has found the necessary money for the shortfall in the mid-term budget. This will not cost the poor, or indeed the Department, a cent. 

The ANC-led government, instead, will be fast-tracking President Zuma’s R4bn luxury private jet. 

Issued by Prof Belinda Bozzoli, DA Shadow Minister of Higher Education and Training, 12 November 2015