Redefining qualifications
What is it with ANC cadres who lie about their qualifications to get a job? Pallo Jordan, Hlaudi Motsoeneng and SAA chairperson Dudu Myeni have been accused of embellishing their CVs with fraudulent qualifications when their lives are the very antithesis of intellectual integrity. The irony is the minute the media exposes some of them, they rubbish educational achievements as superfluous to the work they have “chosen” to do anyway.
In a country where both school and university results are abysmal, in spite of the enormous slice of the budget (R190.7 billion for basic education and R52.5 billion for tertiary education) invested in education, we cannot afford our political leaders to reduce the integrity of academic achievements to nothingness.
What South Africa needs to cultivate is a desire in our youth to respect the importance of education for their advancement in life. Instead, our leaders have the chutzpah to take their principals to court to block investigations into their qualifications.
I refer here to SABC board chairperson Ellen Tshabalala, who dared to apply for a court interdict to halt an inquiry into her allegedly fraudulent degrees. In her application for the job of SABC chairperson, she claimed to have a bachelor of commerce degree from Unisa and a postgraduate degree in labour relations. What intrigues me more is their choice of qualification about which they lie, knowing full well there is no better qualification for a board chairperson than a commerce degree and an understanding of labour relations in an organisation where labour relations are fraught.
Regardless of Tshabalala’s misdemeanours, she refuses to leave the SABC, knowing if her underling – SABC chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng – can get away with it, why not her as well? And so deployed cadres set precedents for others to follow suit – feeling entitled to lie, embellish and misrepresent who and what they really are. Motsoeneng knew the ultimate qualification is to be a loyal cadre – the only prerequisite being a sycophant of the highest order.
When Motsoeneng was exposed for not having a matric, he dramatically claimed: “Your degrees can’t work for you. You need experience to do the work. When these people come with their degrees, they drain the same people” [who are skilled but don’t have degrees] – my emphasis. He dismisses the skills audit conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers out of hand for its exposure of the dire lack of “strategic thinking skills” among executive and senior managers in the broadcasting corporation. Never mind the revelation that only 47% of those surveyed had either a diploma or certificate as their highest qualification, and many of these came from nonaccredited institutions.
These people are a disgrace to the founders of the ANC – many of whom were highly educated, having emerged from mission schools, proceeding on to institutions of higher learning, both at home and abroad. I have previously written about Sol Plaatje and his peers, many of whom went to study at prestigious universities in the US and UK. Though it is widely recognised apartheid denied many of our people access to education, just as many overcame the obstacles by achieving miracles out of a bad situation. In other words, many black people suffered enormous obstacles to achieving their dreams – but through their determination, they got there.
They did not have to lie and cheat to get there.