Good afternoon Mr Speaker and hon members. I wish to dedicate my speech this afternoon to two fellow citizens, men, who in their lifetime were denied the basic right to live to the fullest extent of their God-given potential, Mr Sewsunker Sewgolum and Mr Hamilton Naki.
Mr Sewgolum was the son of an Indian indentured labourer and could not attend school as a young man. He had a natural talent for the game of golf and as a young man he worked as a caddie at the golf course near his family's home. Apartheid laws prevented him from demonstrating his talent, and despite this, he won several golfing tournaments in "nonwhite" competitions. His talent was recognised by a white man he caddied for called Graham Wulff. He was so impressed by this young man that he arranged to take him to Europe where he won several prestigious national tournaments. He was a three-times winner of the Dutch Open, a historic irony if ever there was one. He was finally allowed in 1963 to play in the Natal Open where he beat such luminaries as Gary Player and Harold Henning.
When he played in these tournaments, however, he was never allowed into the club house. He famously had to accept his trophies outside in the rain. Pictures of one such event were flighted in the world's press and in response the embarrassed apartheid government withdrew his passport and banned him from playing in local tournaments, effectively preventing him from earning a living. Mr Sewgolum died in an impoverished state in 1979 at the relatively early age of 48.
The story of Mr Hamilton Naki is as follows. He was born in a small village in the Eastern Cape in 1930. His family was poor and after completing school up to Standard 6, he left for Cape Town and worked at the tender age of 14 for the University of Cape Town, tending its gardens and tennis courts.
One day Dr Robert Goetz asked him to step into his lab to hold a giraffe he was operating on. Dr Goetz was at that stage trying to establish why giraffes do not faint when they lower their heads to drink water. I don't know whether Dr Goetz came to any earth-shattering conclusions that day, but Hamilton Naki did something to impress this doctor who had fled Nazi Germany, and who, it was speculated, carried deep wounds about the evil unleashed in his homeland.
Dr Goetz being a man used to looking beyond the surface of a man's skin, took Hamilton Naki under his wing and became a mentor to this young, 20- something African man from the Eastern Cape. Over the years, he became quite skilled in surgical techniques including anaesthesia and intubation, amongst other things.
He later worked with the acclaimed professor, Christiaan Barnard, who at the time was developing techniques to conduct open heart surgery. Professor Barnard was later to say about Hamilton Naki that he was one of the greatest researchers of all time in the field of heart transplants.
In 1967, 26-year-old Denise Darvall was fatally injured in a car accident. Her death triggered an operation that made medical history. It was her heart that Hamilton Naki is reported to have expertly removed and handed to Professor Barnard who transplanted it into the chest of Louis Washkansy.
While the world flocked to see the man who had performed the world's first heart transplant, Hamilton Naki stayed in the shadows due to possible reprisals from a racist government. In a sense, the Nakis and Sewgolums of our abnormal past were the lucky ones. They were able to peep over the precipice of the horizon of their destiny. And these Hamilton Nakis of our past sustained the flicker of hope of generations who were told that they were simply not good enough.
The higher education landscape of the early 1990s largely reflected the discriminatory outcomes of the apartheid era. In 1990, African university students comprised 32% of the population while white students topped 54%. Female students were notably under-represented.
By 1996 there were twice as many African students as white students and female students outnumbered their male counterparts. But despite these successes, the participation of particularly African and coloured students remained low and the reality is that there is a growing cohort of young people between the ages of 16 years and 24 years who are unemployed and unskilled. These facts suggest that we need to critically assess the accessibility and flexibility of our post-schooling environment.
Accordingly, the Department of Education has been reconfigured to establish, inter alia, a Department of Higher Education and Training, which assumes the responsibility for government's entire skills development component, including private and public Further Education and Training, Fet colleges, work-based training through Sector Education and Training Authorities, Setas, and adult learning centres. The overall strategy of this department accords with the human resources development strategy led by the Deputy President, which seeks, inter alia, to rectify the disjuncture between available skills and the needs of our economy.
The Minister of Higher Education and Training is on record as saying that one of his priorities is to provide a menu of opportunities to the class of 2009. The department he heads intends to pledge R500 million from the National Skills Fund towards a special project to roll out learning programmes this year, particularly aimed at young people who did not fare well at school.
Those 225 000 learners, who in the most recent matric exams passed without a university exemption, could register at universities of technology or at one of the 50 colleges distributed across the country. Those for whom full- time study is not an option and who wish to enter the work place instead, are able to pursue opportunities in the Setas for learnerships, apprenticeships and skills programmes.
Access for the poor has been enhanced by the introduction of the National Students Financial Aid Scheme, NSFAS. One hundred and fifty three thousand students benefitted from NSFAS bursaries in the last year of reporting.
Over the last three years government has allocated a total of R600 million to financially needy yet academically capable students for enrolment into colleges. Seventy one thousand students are the beneficiaries of this initiative. Access for disabled students, however, remains a big challenge and more needs to be done at this level.
Our country is in need of diverse skills, but do we merely hope, particularly in the sectors of scarce skills, that learners will automatically gravitate to them? While government will continue in this term to place emphasis on providing more access to post-schooling options for young people, on the one hand, on the other hand a gap thus exists in our social development and we must address it.
Apartheid has created inherently abnormal access prospects for young people over successive generations, resulting in a paucity of role models within many of our communities. In societies that developed free of the ravages of apartheid and inequality there would be a host of role models inspiring young people in all major fields of human endeavour, whether it be academics, commerce, arts, sports, etc. Positive role models of the kind that inspire young minds towards greater achievements and hard work are a scarce commodity in many of our communities.
Accordingly, we require formal vocational training to be introduced in our high schools; and this is an aspect that will require very close co- operation between the two education departments. This should not be seen as an insignificant matter in the larger scheme of things. Imagine, for a moment, if Hamilton Naki did not meet Dr Goetz; imagine if Sewsunker Sewgolum did not meet Graham Wulff, his benefactor, or indeed if a young Nelson Mandela did not meet his mentors Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo.
We must ask ourselves what it means when we say that education is an apex priority. For us, certainly on this side of the House, the answer must be that we cannot have a single child fall between the cracks any longer. I submit that we owe nothing less to the memory of the many thousands of Hamilton Nakis who lived and died, not ever having had the opportunity to realise their potential and who lie in our collective memories like rows of white marble tombstones.
It is only when we have a system that prizes the worth of every single child that we will finally have buried the legacy that was apartheid education. Thank you. [Applause.]