Gordhan deliberately excluded

Gordhan deliberately excluded from ministerial task team on Higher Education

Interesting that president Zuma would choose to exclude the minister of finance from a task team set up to plot a course for… financing higher education.

Gordhan deliberately excluded

Belinda Bozzoli, the DA’s shadow minister of higher education and training, isn’t at all convinced that the task team set up by the president to find a way out of the university fees mess was thought through all that well. Or is it that Zuma deliberately excluded Gordhan as his political foe?

Either way, it would seem the president thought the ministers of defence and home affairs would have more expertise in dealing with financing higher education that the minister of, wait for it… finance.

“The decision to not include the Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, in a newly formed Ministerial Task Team on Higher Education is baffling,” Bozzoli said in a statement.

“It is equally questionable as to why the President chose to include the Ministers of Home Affairs and Defence. It is clear that the President and the ANC are out of touch with the crisis engulfing our Higher Education sector.”

Bozzoli added that the ANC government has been underfunding higher education for the last 10 years, which has resulted in universities having to rely on student fees to stay afloat, cutting poorer students out of the equation.

“If the government does not provide more funding for higher education, through increased state subsidies to universities, and more support for NSFAS, fee increases will continue in the future, as will the cyclical unrest associated with it,” she said; adding that if Zuma was serious about solving the fees crisis he would have appointed the best people to find a solution.

“If President Zuma was really serious about finding a long-term solution to this, he would have wanted his best minds around the table, including his Minister of Finance. This is especially the case when any funding solution will have to go through the budget process, which Minister Gordhan oversees.”

“One can only assume that his decision not to include such a critical minister in this team is due to internal party politics. If this is true, it shows yet again that Jacob Zuma [is] more interested in his own power, than ensuring the future of young South Africans is protected.”