Dear Honourable Minister Manamela,
You are honoured to revamp and fix the broken Higher Education Sector in South Africa. You deserve the position. Congratulations on your current appointment as the Minister of Higher Education. Your credible and responsible leadership capabilities arrive at a period where South Africa’s higher education sector is in distress. It is characterised by maladministration, incompetence, kleptocracy, malign university management, corruption, and cynicism. We all hope you will be better medication to heal the sick patient, called higher education. We urgently need your courageous and decisive transformational leadership.
NSFAS is a bedridden patient in a vegetative state, in crisis mode. Kindly heal and revive the old hope of multitudes of underprivileged students. NSFAS is just a corruption-rigged, mismanaged, and malign system. The NSFAS direct payment model has brought chaos to the higher education sector. NSFAS is known for late or missed payments, intentionally hidden and untraceable funds, and contracts awarded under questionable circumstances. Students are paying the price for government incompetence and a lack of accountability from political cronies. We implore you to disband and produce a new model of transparent, student-centred method rooted in integrity, diligence, and virtue.
You are urgently requested to pay attention to the collapse of student accommodation around the country. The NSFAS’s model of outsourcing off-campus housing has just enriched the venture capitalists. The result is students who are left stranded in inhuman and unsafe living conditions. This is a disservice to the academic support and better basic living and learning services. NSFAS had destroyed the role of universities in providing a living and learning environment, sheltering learners. You are implored to take back the off-campus student accommodation to the universities. Universities will provide oversight in terms of standards, affordability, and security.
NSFAS is a system that is ingrained with corruption, kleptocracy, incompetence, and malign management in many university administrations. Misusing funds, nepotism, and political interference have eroded the public trust. Universities must be centres of excellence, not playgrounds for venture capitalists. Decisive actions against the transgressors must follow the complete audit of NSFSA mismanagement and poor governance practices.
The honourable minister, you are implored to quickly resolve the issue of historical student debt, which continues to destroy the future of our youth. The well-deserving graduates cannot access their academic records and job opportunities. This is a moral question, not a monetary one. The national student debt relief strategy is needed. We call on you to help the country reimagine a funding model that ensures that no student is left behind because of their economic status.
The Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) and TVET colleges are critical for a capable developmental state. The SETAs are in consternation. They are irrelevant, outdated, underfunded, and detached from the country’s developmental needs; They cannot produce graduates ready to join the struggling economy. You must overhaul SETAs and TVET colleges in terms of curriculum redesign, leadership overhaul and renewal, and significant infrastructural investment.
We want to remember Minister Manamela as one who faced corruption and incompetence head-on, no more rhetoric. We trust your honest leadership rooted in honesty, accountability, and vision. South African students and the youth cannot afford another decade of broken promises and blame-shifting.
Our hands are open and ready to support you in the quest for a just, student-centred, and decolonised education system. Please release us from the chains of corruption and political interference.
Your strength must be centred on the truth and great political will.
Respectfully,
Dr Sefoko Ramoshaba
On Behalf of Concerned Stakeholders in Higher Education
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