#FeesMustFall: Show us the money, Mr President
17 November 2015
This week the Appropriations Committee, and Parliament, will vote on the Medium Term Budget. The DA has made concrete proposals on where money could be found, now, within the current budget, to fund the higher education shortfall created by the 0% fee increase commitment. The Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande, however, remains silent.
The truth is that he is running scared. His department has been dumped with most of the R2.3 billion bill for the 0% fee increase for University students but cannot admit it publically for fear of embarrassing President Zuma and the Treasury.
President Zuma has, as usual, looked after Number One, and managed to make himself look good in the short term. He avoided an embarrassing and politically threatening situation when thousands of students marched on the Union Buildings demanding that #FeesMustFall, by declaring that there would be no fee increase in 2016.
But he did so with a casual disregard for the harsh realities of University funding, his put-upon Department of Higher Education and Training, our 26 poorly subsidised Universities and his beleaguered and floundering Minister and ally, Blade Nzimande.
The DA has exposed the real story behind the resulting funding gap – that the Department, which has been chronically underfunded for 20 years while its mandate has steadily and dramatically expanded, will be expected to pay a staggering R1.9bn of the shortfall from funds already set aside for vital educational projects to benefit students from poor and working class backgrounds.
Equally concerning, our cash-strapped Universities, which put up fees precisely because they were running out of money, will contribute some of this.
And this is only for 2016. No thought whatsoever appears to have been given to subsequent years, as the shortfall will continue to be carried through into the future.
Of the total amount it is clear that the Treasury will only contribute R300 million for one year, while there is little or no evidence that any other Departments of government will contribute anything at all.
However in a radio programme on Thursday this week, the Department’s spokesperson refused to concede that it was going to have to pay, while also refusing to explain where exactly the shortfall was going to come from, claiming that the President would be making an announcement, and adding something about ‘other departments’. The Ministry’s attempts to wriggle away from its own plan is deeply disingenuous and entirely inconsistent with the comments made by the Minister in committee on 4 November 2015, when Minister Nzimande himself confirmed that funding would be coming from the HDI development grant and SETA funding.
This is nonsense. There is no conceivable reason why the public cannot and indeed should not be told right now where the money is to be found. The only reason they are dissembling on this is that they know only too well that they are the fall-guys in President Zuma’s face-saving declaration.
This is the week during which interim budget adjustments are to be made and confirmed, and provides an ideal opportunity for the 2015-16 portion of the money to be sourced during the adjustment process. The DA has put forward constructive proposals as to how this can be done. We are also making proposals as to how the rest of the R2.3 billion could be found without damaging the DHET’s or the Universities’ scarce resources.
President Zuma and Blade Nzimande need to come to the party, end their silence and show us the money.
It is also time the Treasury got off its high horse, conceded that our plans are both constructive and realistic, and supported our proposals to adjust the budget. The chronic and outrageous wasteful expenditure which we all know is taking place in other departments should be their target rather than important budget items for the improvement of the lives and opportunities of the poor.
Until this Government realises that major reprioritisation of budgets, especially those which are bloated and wasteful, is the only way forward in these tight financial times, there is little hope that our most precious institutions of learning will survive, intact, the economic drought ahead.
Issued by Prof Belinda Bozzoli, DA Shadow Minister of Higher Education and Training, 17 November 2015
