A sharpened Blade to drive an all-inclusive growth path
In May 2009, Dr Emmanuel Bonginkosi (Blade) Nzimande, was appointed as the Minister for the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in South Africa.
Dr Nzimande’s initial involvement in the field of higher learning was somewhat predestined. When starting out his career, he wanted to be more involved in labour and union relations, but circumstances earlier in his life channelled him towards higher education.
It all started in 1976 when Dr Nzimande enrolled at the then University of Zululand to study towards a BA degree in Public Administration and Psychology. Following the shooting of demonstrating students in Soweto on 16 June 1976, the administration building of the University of Zululand was burnt down which subsequently closed for restorations from 18 June 1976.
During a six month period of sitting home doing nothing, he attended the trial of Harry Gwala which had a significant impact on the way he viewed life. Dr Nzimande returned to the university in Jan 1977 and completed his degree in 1979. After graduating, he returned to Edendale where he matriculated in 1975 at Georgetown High.
In 1982 Dr Nzimande undertook his internship in Industrial Psychology in the personnel department of Tongaat Hulett Sugar Ltd. He would have rather worked in trade unions, “But there were too much pressure at home and salaries in trade unions were bad,” he smiles softly in memory.
“So, I took the higher paying job at Tongaat to assist my mother educating my sister and brother. I’m a mama’s boy unashamedly,” he chuckles. “Ma’ Nozipho is turning 86 this year. She dedicated and devoted her entire life to provide for us. That’s why I wanted to support her, rather than following my own dreams.”
His mother always wanted her children to go to university because she never had the opportunity, “She assiduously supported me during all the years of my studies.” Dr Nzimande’s father abandoned them, “I grew up as the man of the house since age 12 when he left, and we never ever received a cent from him.”
His mother was from Eastern Cape, eager and bright at school, but was trained as teacher to provide for her family. She is without doubt his biggest role model. “She taught us how to persevere under very difficult circumstances. She often said, “Your worth as human being cannot be measured by any amount of money, your integrity and dignity is not for sale.”
Dr Nzimande’s grandmother was a hawker selling vetkoekies and fish on trains at Pietermaritzburg railway station. “That’s how we landed in Pietermaritzburg, following my grandmother,” he says. He was born there in Kwa-Dambuza on14 April 1958. He attended the Roman Catholic School, Henryville, and then Plessiers Lower Primary School before going to Mthethomusha School in Edendale, the first school in the area established under the new Bantu education system.
At Tongaat Hulett Sugar, Dr Nzimande met Jay Naidoo and began working informally with unions. He resigned in 1984 and took a lecturer position at the Umlazi branch of the University of Zululand in 1985. Here, he founded the Department of Industrial Psychology, became increasingly involved with the trade unions and served on the editorial board of the South African Labour Bulletin in 1986.
During this time he came in contact with Marxism that further influenced his thinking and view, “Which excited me tremendously, it was as though discovering a whole new world,” says Dr Nzimande.
Marxism ideas, in its totality, provide a theoretical basis for the struggle of the working class to attain a higher form of human society. “What an exciting discourse and its relevance to apartheid in South Africa,” Dr Nzimande points out. “It changed my view of what I should do and became more concerned about the lack of black academics in SA. I wanted to teach Marxism, and was wild about it.”
Dr Nzimande joined the University of Natal in Durban during June 1987 to lecture in the Psychology Department. There he became involved in the Culture and Working Life Project, and in 1989 became involved in the National Education Coordinating Committee (NECC) supported by the ANC in a struggle for people’s education.
But it was only twenty years later, on 11 May 2009 when he took the challenging office as the Minister of DHET, that he could be fully instrumental in building upon the education system towards a skilled and capable workforce.
“Now, I have an urge to make a significant contribution in creating a better society. To change the lives of ordinary people for the better. I work with workers, communities, and trade unions towards empowerment and education. I’m an active participant for a democratic South Africa.”
His dedication to education comes from his childhood when his mother insisted every morning that he goes to school. “I never dared telling her I didn’t want to go and never missed a day, even if I did not feel well.”
But mostly Ma’ Nozipho taught him the importance of being a parent, “I see it as a great injustice when you bring children into this world and abandon them, like my father did, and so many other fathers do to their children. I’ve pledged that no matter what happens, I’ll always be available and teach them the value of education. That’s my afterhours job,” he smiles.
Dr Nzimande’s mission is to do the same for all students in SA, to facilitate all means of higher education, “Which is a huge task and obviously cannot be achieved overnight,” he says. “But the department has laid a firm foundation and is building upon the achievements of government since 1994. So far, we’re sitting very good in achieving our 2030 objectives.”
This year, DHET is reaching one million people with the National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), significantly increasing assistance to poor eligible students for access to higher education and training at universities and colleges.
NSFAS provides loans and bursaries for first undergraduate degree students at universities, and bursaries for students studying at the 50 public Further Education and Training (FET) Colleges. The funds allocated to this, have increased from R441million in 1999 to R5.1billion in 2012. NSFAS is expected to disburse about R8.2billion in loans and bursaries for the 2013 academic year.
However, the NSFAS financial aid is not adequate to meet the ever increasing demand. The 2010 NSFAS Review Report illustrates this, and all universities indicate their needs are far greater than the funding made available. In 2012, an additional amount of R350million was made available to all universities to augment their NSFAS allocation, specifically to ensure that returning eligible students are covered.
Dr Nzimande adds, “For the 2013 academic year, we’ll provide similar support once we’ve established the shortfall required and the funds available. We’re also currently assessing how to implement and fund a fee-free university education across the system.”
The Department has made tremendous progress in regards to access to FET Colleges. DHET increased the FET Colleges’ bursary allocations from R100million in 2007 to almost R2billion in 2013. The department is also establishing new FET College campuses and has put R2.5billion towards this.
The department has been approached by a number of private colleges that are concerned of losing students because of these bursary openings. “Thus we’re succeeding in expanding the public college sector, finally seeing the fruits ripen of our efforts,” says Dr Nzimande.
DHET is turning FET Colleges into institutions of choice because that’s what the youth in this country needs. Vocational education and training as an alternative to the academic learning pathway, is a world-wide phenomenon. Dr Nzimande points out, “FET Colleges are viable alternatives to university. We realised that without a strong vocational education and training system, we shall never be able to achieve our development goals.”
DHET focuses more on FET Colleges because artisans, such as plumbers, fitters, turners, and millwrights, cannot be produced anywhere else except in these centres. “As such, FET Colleges are the heart of artisan development and the success of 2013 will be marked as the year of the Artisan.”
The college sector has advanced over the past three years and the DHET is on track in meeting its targets. The headcount enrolment has doubled from 350,000 in 2010 to just under 650,000 in 2012. Some of the indicators of quality advancement are the progressive improvement in the certification rate and the improved quality of teaching and learning.
DHET has also finalised the Lecturer Qualifications Framework which will be the blueprint on which universities train and produce a new calibre of TVET lecturers in line with the new mandate of FET Colleges as centres of skills development.
New life has been breathed into all university education systems through the University Infrastructure and Efficiency Funding programme. Over the period 2007/08 to 2011/12, government invested a total of R6.8billion into this programme and has committed a further R6billion over the next three years towards upgrading and expanding infrastructure and addressing historical backlogs.
In 2010 Dr Nzimande established task teams to look into the viability of building two new universities, one in Mpumalanga and one in Northern Cape. The aim now is to have the institutions established as juristic persons by the end of March 2013. DHET has been provided with a start-up capital and operational budget of R2.1billion for the two new universities.
In 2010, together with Minister Angie Motshekga, DHET published the Integrated Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Education and Development, a 20 year implementation plan. Since its introduction the department has increased the number of universities involved in foundation phase teacher education from 13 to 20.
The biggest challenge so far is refashioning a new department which is a gigantic task. DHET is evolving a new policy framework to compile different strengths from universities and colleges to the workplace. “We simply don’t have enough capacity to address this fully. There are not enough foot soldiers on the ground who fully understand what we want to do,” stresses Dr Nzimande.
“Soon, we’ll meet with the Student Representative Councils (SRC) from the 50 FET Colleges to share visions, get feedback and further input. We’ll do the same with universities. The end goal is to have FET Colleges that will claim their rightful place in contributing to driving the country’s economy, thereby reducing unemployment, especially among the youth.”
The department made lots of progress in supporting the deputy president to establish the Human Resources Development Strategy – SA Council. “We running programs and working groups in all areas, involving all key players as a priority towards the production of professionals, elevating training of artisans, tackling unemployment of youth, increase access of skills for young people, and building capacity for research on needs of further human development,” confirms Dr Nzimande.
To strengthen the National Skills Authority (NSA), is of utmost importance to the department. The legislative role of the NSA is primarily to advise the department on the NSDS III. This requires that the NSA should have the investigative and research expertise in order to effectively execute its mandate. “I’ve approved a budget of R55million for 2012/2013 FY towards this,” assures Dr Nzimande.
The redefinition of the SETA Landscape has ensured that the SETA governance processes are improved. The SETA Landscape turnaround strategy is about managing the SETA system to improve functioning and performance. It’s to set the SETAs on a new course of effectiveness to ensure they have the right impact and contribute meaningfully to economic growth and industrial development.
The efficiency challenges of the National Skills Fund (NSF), “Had so much to do with how its mandate, or the priorities, it needed to address were crafted, than its ability to disburse the funding it had,” says Dr Nzimande.
Over the last decade the NSF’s mandate was narrowly defined in terms of funding windows derived primarily from NSDS I & NSDS II. Anything outside these windows, no matter how beneficial to the education and training system, was not considered for funding. The NSF priorities are now redefined and sharpened to include various key growth strategies of government.
Unfortunately not all Adult Education Centres are functioning optimally. These centres have not been in a position to respond to national priorities around skills development. Currently there are 3,083 centres in the country varying in size and scope. In the 2012 snap survey, these centres were reaching 333,884 learners of which 250,000 were in the lower levels. The learner performance in centres for 2012 was below 40%. DHET has established a task team to investigate the matter with the report to be gazetted for public comments.
In dealing with scarce and critical skills shortages, the department is encountering various challenges in meeting targets. DHET undertook meetings with selected professional bodies from July to September 2012 to address the common threads and challenges in the training of professionals, which require a collaborative and more standardised approach for identifying interventions and strategies.
Agriculture is the backbone of the country’s economy and SA is not producing enough graduates into the agriculture profession. Currently, agricultural education is mostly undertaken through the agricultural colleges which do not fall within the remit of the DHET. “We are in the process of unpacking what it would mean to bring these effectively into the post school system, but until that’s achieved we’re not able to establish what the output from the college system is. This is an area that we’ll certainly be concentrating on going forward,” says Dr Nzimande.
The DHET message to the business community in regards to the department’s plans for higher education is to get actively involved. A central problem of the DHET is the lack of coherence within the post school system as a whole. There’s inadequate information about labour market needs and future growth possibilities, which makes planning and targeting difficult. The DHET needs input from all players to build upon a pool of information for further growth and development and to achieve higher levels of excellence and innovation.
The DHET envisions that in 2030, higher education and training will raise university enrolments to 1,500,000 (a projected participation rate of 23%) as opposed to the 2011 enrolments of 899,120 (a 16% participation rate). “In addition we aim for 4,000,000 enrolments (around 60% participation rate) in colleges or other post-school institutions,” DR Nzimande says.
As per Karl Marx’s relevance to knowledge and education, the institutions are built, the philosophies and policies are adhered to, the prevailing ideas of the time and the culture, are all determined to some extent by the structure of society, which in turn, is a reflection of the economic base with a superstructure that keeps it functioning.
In SA, society as it is meant to be, can only function optimally by a vigorous education system. Education is a reflection of the world created by human activity, and innovative ideas for transformation are reflected in the conditions and circumstances in which they were generated.
Dr Nzimande is passionately building towards creating better conditions and circumstances to achieve adequate transformation, and his past achievements serve as comfortable reassurance that he’s the right man for the task.
He was Director of the Education Policy Unit at the University of Natal from 1990 to 1994. From 1994 to 1999, Dr Nzimande was a Member of Parliament and Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Education in South Africa’s first democratic parliament.
He obtained his PhD in Industrial Sociology for a thesis in the field of Personnel Management from the University of Natal in 1991 and is a qualified Industrial Psychologist.
From July 1998 to the present, he held the position of the General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP). He is a Member of the ANC National Executive Committee, a Member of the ANC National Working Committee and the Chairperson of the Financial Sector Coalition Campaign (FSCC).
He was a Council Member at the University of South Africa, a Member of the National Deployment Committee of the ANC, a Chair Board of Trustees at the Centre for Educational Policy Development, a Council Member at the University of Transkei, Council Member at the University of KZN, and Chair at the ANC Parliamentary Study Group on Education.
Dr Blade Nzimande published numerous works related to the areas he researched, namely education, civil society and the state, affirmative action, education policy development, and socialism.
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Written for: Capemedia | Leadership Magazine
Contact: Samantha Rampono
Editor: Lindsay King
Deadline: June 2013