Mr Speaker, hon members and South Africans, one must admit that there can only be so many resources for so much need. There can only be so many realisable solutions within so much space and time. Therefore, I will resist the temptation of coming up with a wish list of what else needs what resources, bearing in mind that the needs are vast. Instead, I would urge the Minister to look more at efficient and effective utilisation of what he has in the kitty.
He is, of course, a new Minister in a newly reconfigured department where he needs to play catch-up, where he needs to fix, where he needs to rearrange, where he needs to streamline, where he needs to integrate and consolidate the landscape and offering of higher education.
That task cannot be a light one. It comes with a lot of anxiety on all sides. There is anxiety around access to higher education. There is anxiety around graduate output. There is anxiety around student residences. There is anxiety around support for learner staff and staff development, to name but a few issues.
There is also a rush to get this right, but there are tough questions we need to ask ourselves. What happens to those learners who have succeeded? Why are there so many unemployed graduates? Where is this output leading us? What is the quality of this output? What is the relevance of this output to the learner, to the family, to the economy and to society?
Siyabonga Vukuza is one of many students who graduated in 2000 with an honours degree in government studies from the University of the Western Cape. This year is his tenth year without a job. Currently, he is packing cabbages as a casual worker at Pick 'n Pay, Bellville. He was meant to be a change agent for his home. He had great expectations for himself. His home also had great expectations about their sacrifices.
Are the graduate outputs that we demand linked to anything? If an institution offers, for example, government studies, does it mean there was a conversation between government and the university to supply them with such graduates, or is it that the institutions think that government needs these kinds of studies? Where does one go with government studies except to government? In turn, government wants people with experience in government, and so the story goes on and on. This is where you find this new phenomenon in South Africa: that of graduates who become permanent job seekers.
Mr Speaker, if the demolition of houses by the Minister of Human Settlements, as a result of poor workmanship, is anything to go by, what can be said about the poor workmanship that has gone into the teaching of our children over time?
How do we demolish these houses inside our children and rebuild them in one lifetime? Many of us, of our generation, are products of Bantu Education. I can say cautiously that some of us made it in spite of what Bantu Education was meant to do to us, and not for us. How then do we not get it right when it is our time to get it right?
We have a human resource development strategy for the country. Do we have enough quality academics to supply us with the quality output we desire as a country? Is there a correlation between what we have and what we want? How many academics join universities and institutions of tertiary education compared to those who leave because of lack of competitiveness in their conditions of service?
Can we compete with the rest of the world in attracting and retaining these much-needed academics? It cannot be enough to have half-committed academics that are doing more consulting than teaching because they are augmenting their salaries. Something must be done so that the right people are in the right places, doing the right things, because the unintended consequences at these universities are that they end up being retirement villages for those academics that have done that, been there.
Mr Minister, Cope acknowledges the steps you have taken with regard to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme that you shared with us today. While the NSFAS is purported to be part of the solution to a huge South African problem, it has now become a huge problem in the solution it seeks to be part of. It falls short of being that solution.
Yes, the need for funding is great, it has been great and will be great for some time. But we must not sacrifice quality in our quest to fix things. The NSFAS cannot be all things to all learners, only to get them nowhere.
There must be dignity, ownership, responsibility and accountability in the administration of this resource. The students who had NSFAS aid must be adequately covered. The fund must be tied to conditions of service upon completion, just as used to be the case with medical students. I don't know if that still happens. You cannot continue to give out money to students and not be part of where that money takes them. You cannot just, as you said Mr Minister, throw money at the problem and hope the problem will go away.
There must be an explicit commitment among participants, government, the NSFAS, the university and the learner. Currently, the commitment is concentrated narrowly on repayment, instead of being extended to what the student must become as result of the funding. The commitment must be better and smarter than that.
Government must commit to funding learners realistically and with dignity. The NSFAS must commit to covering fully and with dignity the needs of deserving students. The university must commit to making allocations with integrity and fair play to these students, while the students must commit to passing their exams. Of course, there must be consequences for not honouring any side of the commitment. That is why we have a number of dropouts that a lot of time is spent chasing up on, because there is no commitment, there is no explicit understanding, there is no accountability and responsibility between the recipient and the university.
In conclusion, Mr Minister, what stands between you and success will be your own leadership. [Laughter.] What will stand between you and success will be corruption, will be bureaucracy, and will be all those things. Cope does wish you well. We know that you made a lot of promises today. You raised a lot of hopes, and we hope that you can meet them. So, Mr Minister, go on and do it. Thank you. [Applause.]