Irregular spending, corruption and mismanagement by the ANC government have drained the resources of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), which is meant to fund the higher education of millions of promising South African students from poor and working-class families.
While many universities across South Africa are preparing for the start of the academic year, Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande announced this week that there was a shortfall of funding for first-time university students.
It was since reported that ‘irregular expenditure’ by NSFAS has reached R522 million. Yet no person has been held accountable, nor has anyone been prosecuted.
Minister Nzimande noted that NSFAS was under financial pressure, which meant his department had to reduce the intake of first-time students at the University of South Africa (UNISA). This caused panic among students from various universities and colleges who feared financial exclusion, and led to intense protests by Wits University students.
Students in South Africa have been willing to use protests to voice their dissatisfaction; in 2015, the aggressive #FeesMustFall protests on university campuses eventually prompted then president Jacob Zuma to announce ‘free higher education’.
Crumbling before our eyes
Fast-forward to 2021 and this promise of free education is crumbling before our eyes.
As frustration with the overall state of public education grows, demonstrations in the form of these protests will increase.
But political engagement among the disenchanted young does not go far enough.
Even though many of the next generation of South Africa’s leaders object to the current state of affairs and recognise that their future prospects are diminishing, the younger generation has refrained from voting in large numbers, despite the ballot box being a powerful tool to change the trajectory of the country, and to reject the ANC’s poor governance.
The ANC has proved itself incapable of running government, and expectations of the ruling party successfully tackling corruption, reducing debt and solving mismanagement are no longer realistic.
Once again, in the case of higher education, it has used a government department to increase dependency on the state and to exploit the needs of people.
South Africans need to realise that promises made by the current ANC government are never ‘free’ and that the effects of such promises are eventually destructive.
[Image: GCIS]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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