Free university education may impoverish state
SOMETHING like this was just waiting to happen, courtesy of the master in confusion-sowing.
A perfectly-timed grenade thrown just before the Nasrec conference: outgoing president Jacob Zuma’s “announcement” of free tertiary education for families with yearly income less than R350 000, an amount that I, a long-retired, childless senior academic, with my pensioner wife can just dream of.
It had just the desired effect.
An avalanche of consternation, discussion, heated debate, counter-arguments from education authorities plus the inevitable climbing on the bandwagon of the spent force, like the EFF urging “qualifying” students to present themselves at universities on Monday, threatening to spread chaos on campuses countrywide.
All designed to distract attention from his travails and to show – he-he, cough – who is still boss.
Without doubt, universities have prepared themselves for this.
Police will have been asked to be on standby, unobtrusively gathering near campuses. Wits University managed to have an essentially incident-free 2017 thanks to the firm and effective handling of unrest with visible police presence the previous year.
Nor is the government allowing itself to be rattled.
ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa leads the potentially troublesome top six to problematic provinces, reassuring them of the party’s future and preparing them for a prompt scuttling of Zuma.
So-called “free university education” would lead to complete overstressing of already too-burdened staff, and inevitably lead to a sausage machine operation and lowering of standards.
With his nuclear deal, it would effectively bankrupt an already impoverished state.
This might well prove to be a bridge too far, even for Zuma. His still troublesome supporters in the upper echelons are survivalists first. It will dawn on them, if it has not already, that a Zimbabwe-like future might await them.
Zuma’s financial clout financed his patronage, his only real power. It has been severely weakened. Rather throw in your lot with the presently rolling bandwagon that seems to be set fair for a year of radical economic and social transformation.
Balt Verhagen, Bramley, Johannesburg