President Jacob Zuma yesterday announced a commission of inquiry into free higher education.
Taxpayer subsidies for higher education are R25 billion at the moment. Free higher education would need an additional R71 billion. Assume this happens, what
priorities would be shifted aside - health, with its unobtainable R250 billion National Health Insurance scheme,
transport, basic education ...? The list is long.
South Africa's six million taxpayers, who are increasingly hard-pressed, cannot afford it and government knows this. What has finance minister Pravin Gordhan repeatedly stated about financial responsibility since his reappointment last month: that we will only do what we can afford. Should it be implemented, what will it do to government debt and fiscal responsibility that ratings agencies and investors demand?
In very few countries around the world is free higher education a reality. Why does the ANC always believe it can it reinvent the wheel - succeed with outdated and crazy ideas even developed countries abandoned?
The world goes one way and SA the other.
Some believe we should give the inquiry a chance. But we should stop being so accommodating and politically correct to the ANC's bad ideas.
I believe studies on the matter are already on the table. The inquiry is therefore pointless and a waste of money, like so much of the ANC policy and plans.
The commission is a populist - particularly with an eye toward the elections - and placatory move to restive and entitled students ("we have demands that must be met immediately") by a president who cannot make decisions. Why didn't he ask Treasury about affordability - see Gordhan's statement above?
Oh, I have an idea. Reallocate money from basic education, from which we have received mediocre returns and on which we spend, in real and per capita terms, more than African and many developed countries.
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