Zuma unveiled the plan to scrap tuition fees for students from poor South African homes and freeze tariffs for those from working-class households on Dec. 16, two days before Cyril Ramaphosa replaced him as leader of the ruling African National Congress and two days after a body representing the 26 state-owned institutions said each would raise fees by 8 percent. The University of South Africa, the country's biggest with more than 400,000 students, held fees at 2017 rates, it said Dec. 7.
Blade (or blunt) is not happy
He says Zuma's action had undermined the recommendations of a Commission appointed to look into funding for higher education which had found that the country had no capacity to fund free tertiary education. "That announcement to say we are moving to a new scheme 14 days before it had to be implemented messed NSFAS big time, exposed the extent to which NSFAS didn't have a system. It increased the number of NSFAS beneficiaries and what was worse with that decision, it ignored the work that was done by the Heher Commission and the transitional measures. That's why we have agreed with the Treasury now that it will go back to the Heher Commission."
And of course the wasted Afrikaner Niehope slams Blade. That idiot isn't worthy of a hyperlink
Grootes, as usual, wrote the best analysis of the student crisis in the Daily Maverick
there has been a litany of cynical political promises, missed opportunities and simple governance and competency mistakes which may have exacerbated the discontent. And Covid-19 has made it all so much more unbearable. Unfortunately, even though the way students are taught is undergoing radical changes, it is unlikely to improve in the near future. The protest by Wits University students this week stemmed from the same dynamic that has led to protests at universities during the start of every academic year since at least 1994. It relates to students from poorer families who through their own hard work qualified to enter higher education institutions but cannot afford to pay the fees. At the same time, the demand for higher education has risen as our demography has changed and the number of young people who qualify through the system has increased. And yet, capacity has not come close to meeting demand.
Those with a basic knowledge of BEE would ask why bolshie bob's lunatic provision that companies need to be pay 2.5% of their payroll on bursaries for black students at higher education institutions hasn't resolved this problem. The answer lies in the preceding sentence. IT WAS SHEER LUNACY. It actually goes to show the depths that bolshie would go to to pander to the incompetence that zuma was. I come back to this question so often – who on earth would have agreed to that provision. It's too difficult for my BA in History and Law brain to extract financial information from annual reports so this won't be very comprehensive
|
Name |
Gross remuneration in annual report |
Target bursary amount |
NPBT |
Impact on NPBT |
|
Dischem |
6 709 000 000 |
167 725 000 |
868 844 000 |
798 023 075.00 |
|
Pick 'n Pay |
2 832 837 000 |
70 820 925 |
1 736 000 000 |
1 568 275 000 |
The table shows that both companies have a large amount to spend on bursaries in terms of the BEE skills targets. It's unlikely that they are doing it, and few others are, because it's too expensive and has a significant impact on their bottom line. On top of this there are no tax benefits offered like those with learnerships. More importantly, most importantly, it would appear that companies wishing to comply with that provision are simply not. They're telling the dtic to get knotted. Companies are going for the cheaper points – learnerships and disabled. I was dealing with a massive company and they told me they don't have the R40m odd that they would need to spend on bursaries – so they won't.
The problem was that bolshie bob was so keen to please his political boss, zuma, that he decided to solve the problem by adding in an additional BEE requirement. In fact he was so keen on this idea that he tied it into the YES programme. The early drafts of the YES BEE benefit were tied to the bursary programme. If you didn't get all the bursary points then you couldn't benefit from the YES programme, he retracted this when the people that were supposed to pay this money told him to smoke his gulag ganja elsewhere.
If companies complied with this, would we have had an innocent bystander murdered on the streets of Braamfontein? Unlikely. But companies were never going to comply with this. The target is too high. What worried me at the time and continues to worry me is that the dtic will set new BEE targets to meet some other social crisis.
And this not going to stop – the even more clueless BEE commissioner is now hosting a BEE Conference at some stage. I was sent the press release. Looking at the speakers it's very likely that they are going to wax lyrical about the untransformed business sector – I wouldn't be surprised if white monopoly capital makes an appearance every hour or so. So speaketh the awesome awdoz
"Our annual national status reports on transformation show that of the 6% of the payroll, the public and private sectors only managed to spend 37% in 2017, 49% in 2018 and 49% in 2019, and this could be improved significantly to fund higher learning education and offer more on-the-job training through internships and learnerships"
The fact that there's no money for this escapes the useless people at the dtic (awdoz and SANAS included). I have said this so often – the BEE scorecard was designed for a growing economy. That's a feature that the anc is incapable of delivering on. Still I take heart from the corporate fuck you attitude. I think it was the IRR that was talking about a tax revolt recently. The revolt has already begun.
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