ActionSA welcomes the removal of Dr. Nobuhle Nkabane as Minister of Higher Education following a year marked by failure, scandal and neglect. Her tenure offered no meaningful reform and showed blatant disregard for the realities students face daily.
She leaves behind a national student housing backlog of more than 500,000 beds, a dysfunctional NSFAS whose 2023/2024 report is nine months overdue, and a staggering R20 billion black hole at the SETAs, which continue to fail in delivering skills development. Her attempt to bury parliamentary questions under 800 pages of bureaucratic nonsense concealed, among other things, an R11.2 million departmental travel spree. Her final undoing came when she was caught concealing the names of the so-called “independent” SETA selection panel.
This is not a record of service. It is a record of collapse.
However, the appointment of Buti Manamela as her replacement is no cause for celebration. Manamela has served as Deputy Minister since 2017 and has been seated at the centre of the department’s decline. His promotion is not a clean-up but a missed opportunity to clean house entirely.
ActionSA has consistently called for bold reforms to turn this sector around. We believe that Basic and Higher Education should be merged into a single, accountable department. We have proposed expanding NSFAS to support the missing middle by raising the income threshold to R500,000 and introducing affordable, low-interest student loans repayable only after two years of employment, capped at 10 percent of income.
We continue to advocate for the conversion of hijacked buildings in CBDs into safe and affordable student housing. Most importantly, we have called for the scrapping of the broken SETAs and the redirection of their budgets into an innovative Opportunity Fund that delivers real skills and jobs.
We reject cosmetic Cabinet reshuffles that recycle the same failed officials while students continue to suffer. South Africa’s students need courageous leadership, fresh ideas and urgent action — not more of the same.
From One Failure to Another – Students Deserve Better Than Recycled Ministers
ActionSA welcomes the removal of Dr. Nobuhle Nkabane as Minister of Higher Education following a year marked by failure, scandal and neglect. Her tenure offered no meaningful reform and showed blatant disregard for the realities students face daily.
She leaves behind a national student housing backlog of more than 500,000 beds, a dysfunctional NSFAS whose 2023/2024 report is nine months overdue, and a staggering R20 billion black hole at the SETAs, which continue to fail in delivering skills development. Her attempt to bury parliamentary questions under 800 pages of bureaucratic nonsense concealed, among other things, an R11.2 million departmental travel spree. Her final undoing came when she was caught concealing the names of the so-called “independent” SETA selection panel.
This is not a record of service. It is a record of collapse.
However, the appointment of Buti Manamela as her replacement is no cause for celebration. Manamela has served as Deputy Minister since 2017 and has been seated at the centre of the department’s decline. His promotion is not a clean-up but a missed opportunity to clean house entirely.
ActionSA has consistently called for bold reforms to turn this sector around. We believe that Basic and Higher Education should be merged into a single, accountable department. We have proposed expanding NSFAS to support the missing middle by raising the income threshold to R500,000 and introducing affordable, low-interest student loans repayable only after two years of employment, capped at 10 percent of income.
We continue to advocate for the conversion of hijacked buildings in CBDs into safe and affordable student housing. Most importantly, we have called for the scrapping of the broken SETAs and the redirection of their budgets into an innovative Opportunity Fund that delivers real skills and jobs.
We reject cosmetic Cabinet reshuffles that recycle the same failed officials while students continue to suffer. South Africa’s students need courageous leadership, fresh ideas and urgent action — not more of the same.