POLITICS

Prospective young pilots wings’ clipped - Belinda Bozzoli

DA says higher education minister must account for shattered dreams of cadets from disadvantaged backgrounds

Nzimande must account for abandonment of 40 Vukani flying school cadets

Forty young pilot cadets from disadvantaged backgrounds, who were recruited into the Vukani Aviation Programme, have now been told to pack their bags and go home, putting an end to their training to become pilots.

The stipends they were being paid have been stopped and it appears that no further training will take place. 

The students have suffered a great injustice. Their treatment may constitute a breach of the Department of Higher Education’s (DHET) implicit contract with them. 

The DA has written to the Chair of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee, Yvonne Phosa, requesting that the entire matter be brought to the Committee. No response has been received. 

Given that the students have now been told to go home and have had their dreams of becoming pilots ruined, the DA will again appeal to Mrs Phosa to convene an extraordinary meeting of the Portfolio Committee where the Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande, must urgently account for how this was allowed to happen and what will be done to ensure the students are able pursue their pilot training.

The hand-picked students had all given up other careers and study opportunities to pursue what they saw as a dream opportunity to become pilots. The futures and employment prospects of these students have now suffered a severe setback.

Some of these students recently appeared on the current affairs programme Carte Blanche to expose how they were made to fly in unsafe planes, how experienced instructors at the school had been fired and replaced with fewer, less experienced ones and how the maintenance of planes was inadequate. It appears that the students are being punished for bringing these issues – and their own mistreatment - to light.

The Vukani Aviation Programme is run out of the South African Flight Training Academy owned by notorious self-styled “Colonel” Nhlanhla Dube, who once claimed he was President Zuma’s pilot. The programme is funded by the National Skills Fund and managed by the DHET. R77m has been pumped into the project by the National Skills Fund.

The financing of “Colonel” Dube’s private car, plane and helicopter, the exorbitant costs per head for the training, as well the processing of tenders for catering and other items have all been called into question. It is also alleged that the school is illegally holding all of the cadets’ vital documentation, including their pilot’s logbooks.

Their travails began several months ago when conditions at the school began to deteriorate, to the point where safety became a serious concern and the quality of teaching declined. 

The DA raised the issue with the DHET in June, and the matter has been reported widely in the Press. The DHET undertook to investigate the complaints made by the DA and sent an “assessor” to the School in late July. 

The assessor’s report has now been completed, four months after the problem was brought to the Department’s attention, during which period no training whatsoever took place at the school. However no details concerning its findings were reported to the students,. They were told this was “none of their business”. Instead they were instructed to leave the school immediately. There is no indication that any action against “Colonel” Dube is planned. 

This appalling and immoral treatment is quite out of keeping with the DHET’s mission and role in society, and especially with Minister Nzimande’s much vaunted claims to be a champion for the disadvantaged. 

The DA is also initiating an investigation into the many other projects supported by the National Skills Fund as well as the SETAs. We believe it is vital to find out how many other examples there are of students being offered highly-priced training that is never delivered.

The Minister of Transport, Dipuo Peters, also bears culpability, as the inadequacies of the school should have been exposed and remedied long ago by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which falls under her aegis. The CAA has also been missing in action. 

It is unacceptable that young people were promised training and a brighter future, only to have it taken away. The DA will fight for the futures of these students and those who have been let down by the DHET.

Prof Belinda Bozzoli, DA Shadow Minister of Higher Education, 2 October 2015