The chaos that we have been witnessing at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) was not created by the university. Wits is simply a victim of a corrupt government that has now reached its dramatic end.
We must remember that the student protests were preceded by an embarrassing announcement made by the minister of education Blade Nzimande that his department has no money to fund first year students across the higher education sector. Nzimande blamed what he calls a “shortfall” on two factors: Covid-19 and budget cuts incurred by all government departments.
Covid-19 is being used as a scapegoat. The real cause of the shortfall are budget cuts that are the result of many years of corruption by Nzimande’s ANC comrades in government. When you steal money, it runs out at some point.
Nzimande was supposed to tell the students that they cannot be funded because ANC comrade thieves have looted the state until it ran out of money.
What the unfairly victimised new vice-chancellor of Wits Prof Zeblon Vilakazi must do is to ask a good accounting student to tally all the stolen money that has been revealed at the Zondo commission. Such a simple exercise would prove that the money stolen by ANC thieves is more than enough to fund all university students in SA.
In other words, it can be proven that what Nzimande calls a “shortfall” was not caused by Covid-19 or budget cuts, but by the sordid acts of his own comrades in government. Indeed, the same comrade thieves stole money meant to help curb Covid-19.
When a nation is in crisis, it is no time to tell lies. The truth is that the South African state has been looted to the point of collapse by the ANC.
Once students grasp that truth, they will shift the site of their protests from university campuses to the seat of government. Vice-chancellors did not steal money, ANC thieves did.
The other truth that all students must appreciate is that it is not only Wits that is experiencing funding problems; all universities are facing the same problem.
What students must do is coordinate nationally and redirect their protests to Nzimande and his comrades in government. In fact, university vice-chancellors must join such protests and ensure that the protests remain peaceful.
It is also important for society to realise that the funding problem facing our universities is much wider than the higher education sector. The whole South African state is broke.
We have now reached a point where there will be no medicine in rural and township clinics, no linen in hospitals, and the police will no longer receive new uniforms. Potholes are already left unrepaired in most of our towns.
That is what happens when thieves have bankrupted a state. In short, that is how Zimbabwe became a failed state.
When a state collapses, thieves become fatter. Look at Zanu-PF and ANC thieves; they struggle to carry their own stomachs.
The saddest thing is that the so-called “masses of our people” are always duped by promises manufactured by the same thieves before every election. The same political lies are repackaged and covered with a new cloth: “new dawn”, “renewal”, and so forth.
Now that all lies and propaganda have evaporated, it is more than clear that Ramaphosa’s government is complicit in protecting those who have stolen money from the state. How many senior ANC thieves are in prison? How many of their ill-gotten mansions and posh cars have been repossessed by the state?
What the Zondo Commission has now confirmed is that the looting was not done by lone-ranger comrade thieves; the whole ANC as an organisation was involved.
That is why Ramaphosa’s government cannot act. Were it to act, it would be compelled to close down Luthuli House and all offices of the ANC. And if all ANC thieves were to be arrested, Ramaphosa himself, as head of an implicated organisation, which he himself has labelled “accused No. 1”, would have to be arrested.
That is how complex SA’s problems have become. That is the bigger picture protesting students at Wits and elsewhere must not lose sight of.
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