The new minister of higher education and training, Buti Manamela, is under fire for yet another round of controversial appointments to the Sector Education and Training Authority (Seta) boards.
This comes after Manamela announced several officials with corruption allegations on their backs as administrators for three Seta’s that have been struggling with governance failures and the lack of financial oversight.
These administrators will oversee the Services Seta, Construction Seta (Ceta), and Local Government Seta (LGSETA).
Manamela said these administrators have a clear mandate to restore integrity, enforce consequence management and ensure that students and workers are not prejudiced.
Buti Manamela
DA rejects Seta appointments
However, DA portfolio committee member for higher education, Karabo Khakhau, said these appointments do not inspire confidence.
“These appointees are unfit – implicated in corruption, mismanagement, fraud in previous government jobs – or have proved themselves useless in the Seta space already,” said Khakhau.
She said the DA has written a letter to Manamela requesting that he should withdraw these appointments.
“Will Minister Manamela fail his first test of ANC cadre deployment, or will he go down the same path as Nobuhle Nkabane? The facts against Manamela speak for themselves,” she said.
Allegations against Seta candidates
Khakhau said one of the candidates, Oupa Nkoane, is a former municipal manager at the ANC-governed Emfuleni Local Municipality in Gauteng and is implicated in a forensic report that details the mismanagement of R872 million.
Another is a former ANC Limpopo MEC and deputy speaker, Lehlohonolo Masoga, who was implicated in a forensic report by forensic services company Morar for backdating a communications contract worth R4.4 million as the CEO of the Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone. Khakhau said this was seen to justify unjustified payments made to the communications company, Mahuma Group.
Another administrator is the current Deputy Director General responsible for skills development in the Department of Higher Education, Zukile Mvalo. The DA said the problem with this appointment is that all Setas have been reporting to him for the last eight years. “He has failed at stabilising Setas for the past eight years, and has no prospect of fixing anything suddenly now,” said Khakhau.
The DA called for independent candidates to be appointed to Seta boards.
“Minister Manamela announced these appointments, saying they are to address serious and entrenched governance failures in these entities, including procurement irregularities, lapses in oversight, and board instability. How on earth can this be addressed by corruption, fraud, mismanagement implicated ANC cadres?
“We demand that Manamela stop this, and appoint independent non-political persons free of corruption implications to deliver an effective turnaround of the system,” she said.
Background
Manamela was appointed minister of higher education in July after Nobuhle Nkabane resigned from her position.
Nkabane got into trouble with the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training for lying to parliament about Seta board appointments.
She was also accused of appointing ANC cadres to these boards.
The entire process was reversed after numerous complaints from opposition parties.
Are Seta’s effective?
Meanwhile, a study has found that while the Setas are created to solve the country’s skills shortage problem and contribute to the employability of South Africans, they instead eat R20 billion per year in tax money, and reaching only 0.6% of the workforce.
The study found that the Setas have proven to be inefficient and ineffective, according to research by the Bureau for Economic Research (BER).
The BER proposes to resolve the skills problem by restructuring and moving towards a more effective approach that prioritises skills for growth.
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