The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) calls for the heads of those implicated in the Nexus Forensic Services involving the plunder of National Skills Funds(NSF) resources to roll. The progress report to parliament in February 2024, which shows that 6 officials were charged (of which 2 have been absolved, 1 entered a plea bargain, 1 dismissed, and 2 disciplinary hearings are ongoing) is not satisfactory.
SAFTU demands that criminal proceedings against companies that looted the NSF must accompany those disciplinary procedures that are ongoing inside the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET).
Like in all cases of corruption, the losers are poor working-class people from poor communities. In the case of the rabbit breeding project of R123 million, it is reported that the beneficiaries were supposed to be “250 students from the Mtubatuba and greater KwaZulu-Natal regions” who would have benefitted from “skills development relating to rabbit farming, processing, selling and business management.” However, the project did not benefit them. Instead, Nissan Navara, other luxury cars and a farm were bought to benefit one family that controlled the implementing company, Yikhonolakho Women and Youth Primary Cooperative.
SAFTU condemns Minister Blade Nzimande for wanting to “keep the report confidential” whilst he was the Minister of DHET, which has effectively hidden the report from the public. SAFTU is not persuaded that hiding the report from the public is in the interest of justice. Implicated individuals already know that the report collected evidence that implicated them, and if there is anything they want to hide from future investigations, they have already destroyed such evidence. Therefore, we call on the new minister to release the report to the public.
In a diatribe against journalists on Newzroom Afrika, the spokesperson of the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation trivialised the Sunday Times article, saying it has recycled an old report. He proceeded to call the reports mediocre and scurrilous, without bothering to show how mediocre they are! Ironically, he went on to admit that the report has been kept confidential and defended why it has been kept confidential. But the admission that the report has been kept from the public, reporting parts of it by any media house from one period to another cannot amount to recycling.
Given the corruption at NSF, SAFTU calls for the expansion of the investigation into the rest of the Department of Higher Education and Training, targeting the universities, colleges, Service Education Training Authorities (SETAs) and the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). Despite old investigations at NSFAS that have even led to recoveries of more than R688 million, the ongoing bungling indicates corruption.
In the recent period, universities have been rocked by incidences whereby honest administrators who stand in the way of looting are targeted and even assassinated. This includes the killing of Fort Hare University’s Petrus Roets, who was killed in a hit in May 2022. There has been an attempt on the life of Prof Sakhele Buhlungu, which ended in the death of his guard in January 2023. It was said that the attempt on Buhlungu’s life was due to him pushing forward with the investigation of possible corruption.
It has become clearer and clearer that universities and colleges, in addition to being centers of education and research, have become centers of resource plundering by syndicates who use procurement as fodder for self-enrichment. Thus, they have become contested terrains between factions of those who seek to loot, and those astute administrators who want to do right.
Recently, minister Nzimande’s name has also been mentioned in the VBS case, where it is alleged that the SACP’s conference bill of R3 million at Birchwood Hotel in Kempton Park in July 2017 was paid with VBS funds. There is a pattern of financial mismanagement, unaccountability and corruption in the higher education sector especially in the period Minister Nzimande presided over the department.
Finally, forensic investigation must also be conducted by the Service Education Training Authorities (SETA). SAFTU has at varying stages received some complaints from unemployed young people who were involved in some leaderships that ran with money meant to skill them and pay their stipends. That is an indication that money from not only NSFs but also SETAs is misused by corrupt implementing agents such as NGOs, NPOs and cooperatives. This is the money of employed workers which ought to subsidise the skilling of unemployed workers but was squandered under the supervision of the ‘Communist’ Blade Nzimande.
Given Matodzi’s revelation about the SACP benefitting from the VBS at the time it was looting, costing ordinary depositors such as pensioners R2 billion in value, we will not be surprised if the investigations we are calling for could find that SACP and Pseudo Communist Blade has benefitted personally.
