Minister Nzimande must resign

I have evidence that both Sasco (including the PYA, ANCYL, YCL) and Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande declared that FREE HIGHER EDUCATION was and would be an objective of the Zuma administration.

Indeed having spent a good hour laughing at Sasco’s plan for free higher education, and at least ten seconds wondering why Blade bothered to say he was going to do it, only to realise that he had no clue how to do it, before playing the class card and saying “we do not want the free higher education to benefit the children of the rich”. Evidently Cde Blade feared that some of the people from the ANC’s Broke Buddy Empowerment Club would try to get bansela education for their lighties in the rush.

So here it is … I, Avishkar Parmananden Govender, the federal executive director of Salsa — the South African Liberal Students’ Association (as established in 1994) — do hereby demand on behalf of all of the Liberal students of, from and in South Africa, that the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Minister Blade Nzimande, must resign with immediate effect on the grounds of incompetence.

Further to which Salsa invites the public to read Salsa’s plan for Wholly Sustainable, Non-Subsidised, Absolutely Accessible Further and Higher Education, which by virtue of the mechanics of the plan, is actually FREE HIGHER EDUCATION. This plan is contained in Salsa’s Federal Manifesto for July 2009 to June 2010.

Incidentally, Salsa demanded that every one of the 11 official languages be accommodated as a medium of instruction, wherever the languages were prevalent, and that students needed to be academically assisted where they were studying in a language other than their first language. Further we also demanded that the protected languages be preserved and propagated through dedicated language departments at universities. And we demanded this in 1999. And yet three ANC ministers responsible for higher education have been unable to deliver.