Former president Jacob Zuma declared free tertiary education on the last night of his presidency, as a parting shot to appease young South Africans. I, too, think that free education is wonderful, but our universities and the Treasury were not prepared for the bombshell that Zuma had dropped that night, says the writer.
Image: Independent Media
I agree with Sifiso Mahlangu, Editor of The Star, that “Crime has become as routine as sunrise” (‘Zuma was right, send young people to the military’, The Star, May 02).
While I must compliment the Editor for the originality of his simile/metaphor and for acknowledging that Jacob Zuma is a “polarising figure” in our politics, neither he nor Zuma can be described as pragmatic individuals.
Zuma declared free tertiary education on the last night of his presidency, as a parting shot to appease young South Africans. I, too, think that free education is wonderful, but our universities and the Treasury were not prepared for the bombshell that Zuma had dropped that night.
As for compulsory national service for our matric male students (What about our female students, Mr Mahlangu?), that too is an ideology I support, just as I support capital punishment, but if one considers the sheer logistics of what Mahlangu is advocating, it is simply mind-boggling.
Over 600 000 students passed the National Senior Certificate examination in 2024, of which over 80% were males, which works out to about 480 000 students. If we cannot afford to hire doctors, nurses, and teachers, how will our military, which is already a shambles, manage the intake of such an astronomical number of recruits?
The strength of the Afrikaner nationalist government was its military. The white population was a drop in the ocean, so the government of the day could afford to enforce compulsory military service for whites only. One of my Afrikaner female heads of department at a university once told me how she had learned typing and self-defence while being stationed at a military base.
So, yes, national service for both our young male and female citizens is a wonderful thing, but simply not feasible.
Mr Mahlangu warns that our “soft policies will not save us” from the dire threat of an insurrection by the unemployed. One of our “soft” policies is allowing any Tom, Dick and Lerato into the country. Just this past week, over 30 foreign nationals, many under the age of 21, were found locked in a house in my suburb. Victims of human trafficking had been destined to a life of misery in our sweatshops. The entire Western world is taking a tough stance against migrants, and for good reasons.
Another “soft policy” is the admission of underprepared students into our universities, a direct result of Zuma’s myopic view. At the last university where I taught – a formerly disadvantaged institution – about a third of the students in my first-year English class of over 200 should have been at a technical college learning the kind of skills that Mr Mahlangu thinks should be taught in the military.
Finally, Mr Mahlangu should be advocating birth control with the same fervour as he does compulsory military service, which, as I have illustrated, is not practicable.
Harry Sewlall I Parkmore