B
and governance. After only two months in the job Pandor appointed former Unisa vice-chancellor Barney Pityana to investigate problems at the institution. His report was scathing and recommended that the council be dissolved. Pandor has to decide whether she will do so.
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is the only ticket for thousands of young people to higher education institutions. As a country we cannot afford to have a dysfunctional NSFAS. Many students had to go through most of the 2018 academic year without funding because its systems were not working.
Well done to Pandor for intervening and appointing an administrator, Randall Carollissen, to take over NSFAS’S governance, management and administration to turn things around. One of his first acts was to tackle Steven Zwane, the scheme’s chief executive. Zwane resigned on the day his disciplinary hearing was to start.
There are many challenges that confront the higher education sector, but it is commendable that, within the short space of time that Pandor has been at the helm of the department, there have been noticeable changes. conduct when he was the deputy president; from brokering a peace deal in Lesotho to bidding for the rugby World Cup, Silili was everywhere.
When Mabusa has been on show, it has generally been for something uncontroversial.
Mabusa cannot afford to lose his new-found ally — not with bitter Dlamini-zuma supporters desperate for revenge and eager to ensure his name remains off the parliamentary list in the new year.
The deputy president is trying to put on a new cloak, but he has yet to sever himself from his past. Until he does, his presence will threaten the government’s “unity”; ironically, the political term he was the first to propagate.
NOSIVIWE MAPISA-NQAKULA Minister of
Defence and
Military
Veterans
D
In peacetime,
South Africa’s defence force’s core responsibilities have morphed somewhat.
There’s the role of securing our borders, including warding off pirates intent on plundering our, and our neighbours’, territorial waters for ever-dwindling marine resources.
Then there’s its peacekeeping operations and helping out with natural disasters. This year the defence force was asked to step in with its engineers when the water supply from Gauteng’s Vaal River system was under threat from pollution mainly caused by a broken sanitation system.
For the past three years the department has had an incremental reduction in its budget and this year there was a further drop, so defence and military veterans will make do with R5.8-billion less. Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-nqakula has acknowledged that this will probably be the case for the short-term future.
The department once again received a qualified audit for, among others, gross mismanagement of assets and R399-million of fruitless and wasteful expenditure. And, as has become commonplace across many government sectors, there have been few repercussions because investigations have stagnated for more than a year.