At the University of Fort Hare, the doors of learning have been thrown open, taken off their hinges and used as firewood. But amid the systematic demolition of that once-admired university, one small corruption kerfuffle has me scratching my head.
The kerfuffle in question involves 15 employees of the Eastern Cape government and local municipalities who, according to News24, have recently been deregistered from Fort Hare’s honours degree in public administration, after it emerged they didn’t have the minimum qualifications for enrolling in said degree.
Now, by the current standards of Fort Hare, this is an extremely minor crime. News24’s investigation is chilling, with some at the university suspecting that a senior administrator was assassinated for trying to uncover institutional corruption.
It has, however, got me wondering about those 15 public officials, the majority of whom are, I assume, ANC cadres, and the practicalities of trying to teach postgraduate public administration to them.
Of course, it’s a fairly safe bet that most of them weren’t planning to do much learning: anyone who allows a dodgy fixer to enrol them in a degree they know they aren’t qualified for is clearly looking to gain some letters behind their name without doing a stitch of work.
But still, it’s got me wondering: how, exactly, do you teach honours-level public administration to the beneficiaries of ANC cadre deployment?
Given that it’s a one-year degree, and that the first six months would be spent simply explaining the concepts of “public” and “administration”, how would a university cram all the actual content into the remaining six?
And if it found a way, perhaps by supercharging the interest and productivity of the students by telling them each module was a tender application, how could it get the cadres to understand any of it?
I mean, how do you explain budgets and audits to someone who believes that money is a kind of invisible milk, endlessly squirted out of the magic teats of taxpayers?
How do you explain energy systems to someone who believes Gwede Mantashe and floating Turkish electricity generators are a sustainable solution?
How do you explain law enforcement to someone who thinks the law only applies to political enemies or poor people?
How do you explain transportation to someone whose party has made railways extinct in the Eastern Cape?
How do you explain commerce to someone who actively hates business, except for the business they are running on the side, illegally doing business with the state?
No, better to deregister them now than put them and their poor lecturers through the hell of trying to turn takers into thinkers.
TimesLIVE Premium
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.