En Passant: So, who needs matric anyway?

LISTEN: so you’ve got a child writing the matriculation exams at the moment, and you seem to be having more sleepless nights than he or she is, worrying about what to do if they plug the exams. Moenie worry nie, alles sal rectum.

You see, there’s an new system in place that sort of invalidates the worth of a matric certificate. This has got nothing to do with the pass mark being only 30% which in its own way makes a matric certificate only slightly more valuable than a roll of Zimbabwe dollars, which in themselves were slightly cheaper (but not as absorbent) as a roll of Forget Me Not Twinsaver one-ply toilet paper.

No, the thing is, and this is borne out by my own experience, when your lightie (or little Doris) actually applies for a job, the chances are negligible that the prospective employer will actually ask to see the actual matric certificate. I have had five jobs in my life and not once has the personnel department said, “Oi, we’d like a certified copy of your matric certificate for our records.”

It gets better. If you or your child have the nerve, you can claim to have qualifications over and above a simple matric certificate, and the chances are that no one will question them. You might doubt this but a couple of recent cases, high profile cases, beautifully illustrate this trend.

You might remember the ANC stalwart Pallo Jordan who was once a member of parliament and minister in government. Now ol’ Pallo, a neat and seemingly thoughtful man, adopted the title of “Doctor”, even though it turned out he was no more a doctor than Mickey Mouse. He was not a doctor as we understand the title – a person who practices medicine, he never earned a PhD in another discipline, and he’d never been the recipient of an honorary doctorate from a brown-nosing university.

He said, and this is one of the tricks, that his qualifications were earned at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and/or the London School of Economics, and that, of course, makes checking a bit more of a hassle than if you say you have a diploma from Vryheid College.

Another recent case is that of a Mr Motsoeneng, the acting SABC chief operations officer, whose matric certificate seems to be the subject of a dispute. The Public Protector got involved with the investigation and discovered that whereas Mr Motsoeneng claimed that he’d completed matric at a high school in Qwa Qwa, in fact he hadn’t.

Now, there’s a lesson to be learned here, and it also applies to ol’ Pallo Jordan. If you are going to be a larney with dodgy credentials at the SABC or in some other high profile enterprise, then pasop, ol’ Thuli Madonsela might be on to you. But she, as the Public Protector, is not going to bother with you if you’re not in the public sector, so make sure your “matriculating” child avoids, I dunno, the SABC, SAA, the Post Office, Eskom, you know, the usual parasites… sorry, I mean the usual para-statals.

Especially the SABC because that worthy institution seems to attract inventive executives. Its current chairperson, one Doris… hold on, not Doris… Ellen, that’s right Ellen Tshabalala, she claimed on her CV to have a Bachelor of Commerce degree and a post-graduate degree in labour relations, both awarded by Unisa. Problem was, Unisa disagreed.

You’d think that would be cut and dried – she says she has; Unisa says she hasn’t; end of story. But you’d be wrong. Ol’ Doris Tshabalala got a lawyer, and tried to get the High Court to stop a parliamentary investigation. Why? If she has nothing to hide, why hide it?

I don’t know what happened most recently but she’s obviously not keen to surrender the position and its very handsome salary. Are the delaying tactics simply to give her time to “manufacture” the relevant qualifications (know what I mean, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more)? You and I in the private sector would have already been dismissed.

And who’s that dude at South African Airways, Nico Bezuidenhout, is it, the acting CEO? He claimed to have a Bachelor of Commerce in transport economics and industrial psychology as well as an MBA. In fact he hasn’t got either, but that didn’t stop him running our national airline, which makes you think.

I ask you this: at the time of their appointment didn’t anyone within these organisations ask to see the actual certificate, did no one ask, did no one check, did they deliberately not do so?

I dunno. In the case of your child who has just written matric, I would advise caution in some fields of endeavour.

If they are going to bullsh*t their way into some organisation like, say, SAA, where the worst they can do is lose another billion rands off the bottom line, then that’s one thing. But if your child has always wanted to be a nuclear physicist, but unfortunately flunked matric, and still manages to land a top spot at Koeberg nuclear power station, the consequences could be dire. Trust me, I’m a doctor.