Wits University’s SRC rejects the appointment of Dr. Blade Nzimande as the Minister of Higher Education and Training, Science and Technology.
With #FeesMustFall activists now in parliament and Dr. Blade Nzimande returning as minister to the department, the discourse around higher education is about to see another chapter added to its story. Fresh after the cabinet was announced, the Wits University Students Representative Council (SRC) released a statement highlighting how dissatisfied they were with Nzimande’s return to the hot seat.
The statement read, “The Wits SRC would like to congratulate the President of the Republic of South Africa on his election into the highest office in the Republic. We would like to commend the commitment to the transformation agenda by appointing a cabinet that consists of 50/50 women representation. However, we would like to also express our disappointment at the decision to recycle Dr. Blade Nzimande back into the higher education sector.”
They sighted the following reasons for their displeasure at the return of Nzimande:
- The rollout of the free education that was promised has not been completed. We, therefore, cannot afford to have a minister who is meant to be at the centre of this implementation but instead has shown himself to be directly opposed to the realization of this cause.
- At the height of the student’s revolution in 2015/16, he contributed to turning our campuses into crime scenes at a time where students were putting their bodies and lives on the line for a genuine cause. Because of his ignorance, we now have #FMF activists languishing in prison, placed under house arrest, summoned to court every other week, faced with charges, and at the risk of losing their ‘fit and proper’ because of his lackluster approach of dealing with the issues at hand.
- Under his administration, instead of being a leader sympathetic to the plight of black poor students, he chose to make a mockery of students by saying that students must fall and deployed the police to deal with protesters decisively.
- The council is questioning how they can trust Nzimande to assist the lives and futures of thousands of poor students.
They stated, “We do not believe Dr. Nzimande is either worthy or capable of leading this sector at the current epoch because of his anti-transformative posture.”
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