Not the sharpest blade in the drawer

Sometimes it’s hard to look at certain of our cabinet ministers without wondering why they still draw a government salary each month.

Higher education minister Blade Nzimande fits seamlessly into that category. Nzimande was appointed by President Jacob Zuma back in 2009, apparently a quid pro quo for his support during the dark days after Zuma had been fired as deputy president.

So what has Nzimande done since? Well, he’s done what politicians are good at: stood up at podiums and called for “urgent” action on various points, using an archaic revolutionary idiom that no longer girds the sort of loins it used to back in the 1980s or 1990s.

There was no more perfect symbol of Nzimande’s schism from the “revolution” he so loudly professes to be part of than the students widely booing him outside parliament last week. That he had to be protected from the students by a barricade only underscored the irony.

This is no man of the people. When you’re in power, and you’ve failed to implement your “revolution”, you’re either lazy or didn’t know what you were talking about in the first place. Small wonder he has no idea how to finance free university education.

On university fees, Nzimande has done zilch. In particular, a 2012 report into higher education recommended specific action be taken — but nothing was done. Back in 2009 when he announced the investigation into fees, he said it was “imperative that poor students should not be denied the opportunity to quality higher education”.

The SA Communist Party, ever eager to overlook the obvious and rational reason for what’s going on, claimed there was a conspiracy afoot to remove Nzimande over the fees blowout. Rivals were trying to make him “look bad”, they said.

But you don’t need to believe in any conspiracy to understand why Nzimande’s time has long since expired. The students outside parliament, his constituency, know that all too well.