Zuma’s poisoned chalice of ‘free education’

President Jacob Zuma left a poisoned chalice for his successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa, when he declared tertiary education would be free, knowing there was no budget for it, political analysts say.

But there was no way Ramaphosa could run away from it because it was his party’s promise if not his own.

“He has to meet the demands of the students. There is no way that he can throw a spanner in the works, he must engage the students, said analyst Dr Ntsikelelo Breakfast, from Stellenbosch University.

The experts were reacting to renewed protests at universities over financial exclusion emanating from the ANC’s unfulfilled promise of free education.

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Zuma declared there would be free tertiary education for students from low to middle income backgrounds on the eve of the Nasrec ANC national conference.

Now, free education has become the poisoned pill Ramaphosa has to swallow. Various political parties have been putting pressure on the ANC government to implement it.

Political analyst professor Susan Booysen said Zuma deliberately declared free education merely to leave a radical legacy for himself.

But Ramaphosa had an impossible task in dealing with the matter when the Covid-19 pandemic needed as much funding as possible.

“This, in a way, is a more serious crisis than it was in 2015 during the #FeesMustFall protests. I see a deep crisis around this matter,” Booysen said.

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“The Jacob Zuma we saw then is the same Jacob Zuma now. He probably knew there was no money for this and that he was putting the fiscus under strain. But he wanted to give himself a radical legacy. He had not done anything radical like promised in Polokwane, but he did it in an irresponsible and unsustainable way,” she said.

When Zuma declared free education, National Treasury was not prepared for the expenditure and did not have a budget for it.

“Zuma made the announcement but did not make provision for its sustainability,” Booysen said.

“This is a poisoned chalice for Zuma’s successor, it’s an impossible formula,” Booysen said. Breakfast said that in declaring free education ahead of the ANC national conference, Zuma wanted to influence delegates to vote in a certain way.

“That announcement was made at the last moment, it was a political posture.

“It was meant to outmanoeuvre his opponent, Ramaphosa,” Breakfast said.

Breakfast highlighted that free education meant different things to different people. To students it should not have any strings attached.

“What we have at the moment is not free education, but an arrangement to cushion poor students to access education. If it was free, why do students still have to pay historic debt?”

The analyst said the problem was complicated by the fact that tertiary education had become a commodity from which universities expected to make profit, instead of treating it as a public service.

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