House Chairperson, I am not going to waste time here for South Africans, especially student's time discussing some cooked targets of the Department of the Higher Education. From time to time, the department continues to prove that they excellently failed to execute their mandate. Perhaps, we must look into these people who are leading that particular department because they are leading thinkers. Universities and technical, vocational and training, the TVET, colleges are a space of thinkers. You don't take none thinkers and make them lead such critical departments.
I am saying this precisely because there was a commitment to the development of policy with regard to gender-based violence in all institutions of higher learning. To date nothing has been done. I know you want to be reactive and wait for young girls to be killed, to come here and annoy us to say "we are doing this and we are going to that." [Applause.
Just yesterday Central Johannesburg College, CJC, were here in our committee. They reported that there is a student who was brutally murdered trying to go and catch the train. She went to the train because she couldn't get an allowance from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, the NSFAS, to use normal transportation she would use ordinarily. The mistake of the department, they ignored them. Hon Chairperson, we are well aware through the responses from the Deputy Minister there is a deliberate sabotage with regard to this question of policy of gender-based violence.
We all know that the NSFAS is incapacitated. The University of KwaZulu- Natal, Edgewood campus was burning last night. We are all aware and I am sure you have seen on the news. [Interjections.] We cannot be happy about that. In fact, we condemn that. We must not turn a blind eye on the realities that are happening on the ground. The fact that the NSFAS couldn't pay the fees of some of these students, as a result, universities came back and said we allow you to register. We will wait for the NSFAS to pay during the course of the academic year. Unfortunately, the NSFAS did not pay. The debt continued to escalate.
This year the University of KwaZulu-Natal said it's no longer going to assist students to register because this NSFAS and government seemed to be very disloyal and dishonest. They said they would pay last year's figure, but they couldn't. Today students are very angry.
UNIDENTIFIED MEMBER: You are lying. [Laughter.]