With Seta appointments, the ANC once again proves survival trumps integrity, leaving citizens to face the fallout of poor governance.
Surely, you would think, the new minister of higher education and training, Buti Manamela, is pulling the country’s collective leg with his appointment of administrators to three of the Sector Education and Training Authority (Seta) bodies.
Manamela, in appointing the three, said they “have a clear mandate to restore integrity” and “enforce consequence management”. Given their track records, we wonder how that will go.
Oupa Nkoane, a former municipal manager at the ANC-governed Emfuleni municipality in Gauteng, is implicated in a forensic report that details the mismanagement of R872 million.
Former ANC Limpopo MEC and deputy speaker Lehlogonolo Masoga was implicated in a report by forensic services company Morar for backdating a R4.4 million communications contract as CEO of the Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone… allegedly justifying unjustified payments.
The final administrator is Zukile Mvalo, the current deputy director-general for skills development in the department of higher education.
The DA claims “he has failed at stabilising Setas for the past eight years and has no prospect of fixing anything suddenly now.”
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It certainly looks like Manamela is in danger of following in the footsteps of his recently departed predecessor, Nobuhle Nkabane, who resigned after getting caught lying to parliament about Seta board appointments.
She was also accused of appointing ANC cadres.
Given that all three of Manamela’s appointees have escaped “consequence management” for their behaviour, what hope is there of them sorting out the Setas to which they have been appointed?
There must be other candidates who could fill these positions with competence and integrity – even if they are not loyal members of the ANC.
But it appears that cadre deployment is the hill on which the ANC is prepared to die.
And we’ll be the collateral damage.
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