AFTER THE BELL: The unbelievable mess at NSFAS should cost Buti Manamela his job

If it’s true that your life stage is defined by the age of your children, I’m at the stage where I keep wondering what young people can do after school.

My wonderful teenagers are at an age when that question is becoming a lot more urgent.

I remember that time for me and give thanks that the teenagers have more direction than their father did.

But as they say about life, the All Blacks and teenagers, nothing is certain.

It seems obvious to me that it’s much harder to get into something after school than it was for my generation. And while I was lucky enough to be privileged, it still didn’t seem that hard to get into a university.

It looks almost impossible to me now sometimes, when you consider the huge sacrifices that people make just to get some studying done.

As a society one of the most important things we do is get young people from poorer communities into higher education.

I sometimes think hope alone is holding our society together, as communities weep and celebrate as one of their own does well in matric or is accepted to a university in the big smoke.

I also thank the good Lord I did not have to study, as a late-stage-teenager, with all of that hope resting on my shoulders. It must have been an immense burden for so many young people.

So, I never quite understand how we mess up the funding of higher education so badly.

Because, no matter which way you look at it, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is a mess.

Yesterday, News24’s Prega Govender reported that some of our universities have not received the money due to them. As a result, they may not be able to pay their staff.

More than R10-billion is at stake here. It’s an incredible amount. Money that should be put to good use.

I don’t know Higher Education Minister Buti Manamela that well. But he and I have bumped into each other for probably longer than a generation.

I cannot understand why he thought getting someone like Hlengani Mathebula in to fix it would ever fly. Or why he thought it would make anything better.

He was heavily involved in what happened at the SA Revenue Service during the State Capture era, something that, as the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Tshwane found last week, must count against him.

Mathebula has given us every impression of trying to basically eat or, frankly, steal as much money as he could while in the position.

First there was the R5-million-a-year salary, then the army of advisers who would be paid R11-million as a group.

Then came Siyabonga Goni’s amazing reporting in Daily Maverick about how he ran up invoices of more than R250,000 on accommodation.

Asked about this in Parliament, it seems he was able to keep a straight face when he claimed that he could not stay in a room with a carpet because “dust mites trigger my sinuses”.

I mean, seriously. You can’t make this stuff up.

Imagine if the CEO of a JSE-listed company were to come with such a story to shareholders.

Mathebula, with a nose for the incompetent and the immoral, appointed Bojane Segooa to oversee parts of the audit process at NSFAS.

Her previous claim to fame had been to pocket R625,000 as chair of Daybreak Farms while the animals under her care had to be put down because they had not been fed.

The net result of all of this – of Manamela’s appointments and Mathebula’s immorality – is a mess.

If universities had to stop functioning, they would dash the hopes of millions of people – both the young and aspirational, and those older people who hope for a better future for the young.

The NSFAS issues have been running for so long that I have to ask if it is not all deliberate; if someone, somehow is able to make a huge amount of money from the fact that billions of rands are flowing through it.

The size of the money flow must make it much easier to skim a large amount off the top.

How else are you going to continue in the sinus-friendly accommodation to which you have become accustomed if not by stealing it?

I wonder if the President has been paying any attention to this.

Does he really need to keep Manamela in Cabinet? He’s from the SACP anyway, and surely that means you are going to fire him sooner or later.

So why not just do it now? And then get someone in who can actually fix the mess.