If you ever wanted to know how a sausage is made, the saying goes, don’t ask. It is messy and sickening as ground meat and stuffing from sometimes odious sources are mashed together and pressed inside a skin casing made from intestines.
I speak, of course, of the new GNU cabinet whose white and black stuffing has actually expanded the size of the senior executive simply to make space for potentially grumpy members of the ruling party.
What a disaster. Memes have exploded all over social media. In one of them, Angie Motshekga, shifted from education to defence, is all dressed up in green combat gear with a line saying: we are 30% safer! (mocking of course the 30% pass requirement for most school subjects). Gayton McKenzie should have been made minister of correctional services, someone else argues, because the former jailbird knows the system inside out. To be honest, I simply cannot see this uncouth man (anti-immigrant is his calling card) taking in the finer points of ballet’s pas de deux in a performance of Swan Lake or appreciate the rich slave history embedded in lines from Daar kom die Alibama.
Irritatingly, the president arrives late as usual and then says something incredulous. The cabinet was chosen so ministries “will have people with the experience, skills and capabilities to deliver on its mandate”. Are you kidding me? The minister of basic education held political responsibilities in health, as chief whip, and as spokesperson for her party. What does she know about the intricacies of systemic education or the underlying reasons for the reading crisis in primary school? Yes, I know, I know, these are political heads, not experts, in their new portfolios.
There is such a dishonesty about these appointments in the way the media reports the credentials of our ministers.
That’s the problem right there. Leading countries in the world put education experts as ministers of education and experienced generals as heads of national defence. Should we be relieved that Bantu Holomisa, the deputy minister of defence, and ex-general, promised us no coups?
We do not know how foolish we look by taking inexperience from shadow positions in politics and making them heads of the country’s biggest fiasco, the school system. There is such a dishonesty about these appointments in the way the media reports the credentials of our ministers.
Consider for a moment the minister of higher education, Dr Nobuhle Nkabane, whom we are told has “a robust academic background”. Robust? In her recent life, the minister has worked as a personal assistant, youth co-ordinator and customer care manager apart from political leadership in minerals and energy. She holds a doctorate in public administration and then this “robust” announcement: “experience as a tutor at Unisa”. That, for those outside higher education, is not a senior scholar with accomplished research credentials or higher education management and leadership experience. No, that is a junior staffer helping other students with the subject matter. The appointment disrespects the higher education sector.
By the way, minister, please tell your staff to take down the online announcement that you are studying towards another degree at SOAS, University of London. Only announce qualifications already achieved. Thank me later.
Still, the sausage we have is the sausage we will have to live with, because politicians do not care about experience and expertise, only about the stuffing. Of course, the strength of the casing that keeps all those ingredients inside the intestinal skin is already being tested. Sadtu, the largest teachers’ union, has already flexed its muscles and indicated that it is not happy with the minister of basic education. This is to be expected from a union that fears losing the political protection that it enjoyed under the ruling party such as corruption in teacher appointments and low standards for “matric” markers.
Despite breezy announcements already made by one of the education ministers, understand that neither of them will have free rein in policymaking, for the non-majority status of the two main parties means that we ought not to expect radical changes in schools or universities.
This means a lot of fighting over priorities and little progress on important education issues such as the full funding of early childhood education or the never-ending mess at NSFAS.
At some point, the sausage will explode, skin and all, simply because nobody has enough authority to keep the stuffing in place.
All of that said, the achievement of a GNU is something I am proud of. It enabled us to move seamlessly from the election results to a mature solution for our democracy. Our president has been astute in pulling most of the parties into an agreement that is best for the country at least in the short term. For that we should be grateful.
I am sorry I had to braai that wors, but that’s what columnists do.
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