Chairperson, I would like to join the Minister of Basic Education in thanking the director-general and the acting director-general in the department for the help they have given us, and also the chairpersons of the two portfolio committees. I think, frankly, there is one message - we might be putting it in different ways - and that is that as much as there may be two Ministers for the purposes of focusing on aspects, there is one education system, not two. I think that provides the basis for knuckling down and doing the work and, hopefully, the opposition won't become professional critics, but rather a part of us working together. [Applause.] We don't want professional students in higher education, just as much as we don't want professional critics.
I'm sure hon Smiles will smile when I give him this answer: Recognition of prior learning should actually neither be the rule nor the exception, but it should be integrated into the education system. That should be our approach to this particular matter.
I'm very happy that, together with hon Wilmot James we are going to start a new movement, a movement for dialectical materialism for all under the slogan: Working together, we can study more dialectical materialism. [Laughter.]
Hon James raised very critical issues around how to build on the strengths in our system and for various institutions to actually have niche areas. We agree with that, it is very important. We should just guard against reproducing the same inequities that have been in the system by further privileging those institutions that have been privileged already. It provides the basis for an ongoing engagement and debate, because you cannot reproduce the Walter Sisulu Campus in the former Transkei to be the same as Wits University, but it does not mean that the one must be higher or lower than the other; rather similar in quality, but specialising. It is something that will be well worth it.
I agree, by the way, with the interjections made. It's unacceptable for the National Student Financial Aid Scheme not to spend all the money. It is something I am looking at and I have already asked for a report of why this money, that was supposed to be spent, was not spent.
I must thank all the members for their contribution, agreeing with a number of things that were said, but hon Mpontshane, if we are moving slowly with the transformation in education, please understand, we are still trying to undo the legacy of ubuntu-botho [humanity] in our largest education province, KwaZulu-Natal.
Loba buntu-botho enanizama ukusifundisa ngabo Inkatha yikho lokhu okusihambisa kancane. Ngiyabonga Sihlalo kakhulu. [The same ubuntu-botho that you used to teach us about Inkatha Freedom Party, is the very reason we are making slow progress. Chairperson, I thank you.]