Doors of learning may yet open
If one serious policy direction emerges from the ANC’s generally limp policy conference this past week, it is the resolution to provide free tertiary education to those who can’t afford it — the present benchmark is families earning less than R75 000 a year. And the party has set itself a pretty close deadline for the achievement of this aim; it would like it to happen by 2018. Can it be done? Can the necessary funds be dug up from the treasury, and can they be ring-fenced so that they don’t bleed away as funding schemes such as the NSFAS have done, without having a sufficiently wide boosting effect for those who sign on? Such a policy could easily turn into another National Health Insurance (NHI), which has been dragging its way through the policy equivalent of “development hell” and is only now showing any signs that it will eventually come together. That the NHI has come this far is probably the achievement of the minister of health; a similar scheme or any direct funding plan for students would require an equally committed minister — and probably a person of the greatest ingenuity and in command of great negotiating skills. The present minister of higher education has not shown an excess of such qualities, but that could be because of his political issues with the president and the general inattention of the Zuma Cabinet. Given a truly inspiring and hopefully reachable goal to work towards, it’s possible that he could get behind it and give it the requisite push — or find a successor who has the energy and determination to drive such a plan.
It is no doubt far too easy to shrug one’s shoulders at ANC policy ideas because so many of them have failed to blossom in reality. There is also a great deal of confusion about what exactly ANC policy is in various areas, which makes it harder to understand whether any one particular policy innovation is a good idea or not — is it even being put forward with seriousness, or is it just a rung or two for individuals to use in a climb up the power ladder? As the ANC’s recent policy conference demonstrated, leaders putting forward particular ideas are not necessarily doing so because they believe passionately in such a direction but because a policy pronouncement, and/or the special way in which it is articulated, can define their factional positions in the ANC’s internal battle for power in the organisation. For example, those parroting the “radical economic transformation” line, without any clarity or nuance about what it might mean, are simply singing “We’re behind Zuma” and “We want Nkosazana for the next president” songs.
We cannot, however, ignore all the ANC’s policy resolutions until they clarify themselves and prove whether they are workable or not. In the case of free tertiary education, this promise has been hard-fought, not so much by the ANC itself as by students. In this, the ANC has heard the students and those who supported their call, and it is making a bold step towards the realisation of the promise of the Freedom Charter when it says that the doors of learning shall be opened.