Hon Speaker, I am not in the fighting mood the hon Bhanga is in. My colleague the hon Mpontshane serves on this committee and has been part of the consideration of this Bill at that level. He is away on oversight, and my brief is to support the Bill on behalf of the IFP. [Applause.] However, there are a few issues that I wish to raise on his behalf, which I think he raised in the committee as well.
On the face of it, the Bill seems to allow the Minister to step in and assist universities that may have lost their way. Yet, one has to question the extent to which the power to intervene in the day-to-day running of the universities is placed in the hands of the Minister. This can, we believe, jeopardise the independence of the institutions if the Minister acts on incomplete or inaccurate information, as demonstrated in the recent court case involving the Central University of Technology in the Free State.
The aim of this Bill must not threaten the autonomy of the institutions, but enhance the pursuit and practice of excellence in academic work. When serious breaches of procedure and financial management plague an institution, the Minister is bound by the Bill to intervene.
The placing of institutions under administration begs the question of what went wrong to cause the councils to become dysfunctional in the first place, thereby precipitating the intervention of the Minister. The root cause of dysfunctional councils may either revolve around cadre deployment or the employment of the wrong people to posts they are unqualified for. This undermines the governance and management of institutions. If council members do not know what they are doing, hon Minister, they are setting up the institutions, especially formerly disadvantaged ones, to fail.
The hon Minister must ensure that the lessons learnt from a dysfunctional institution are proactively applied to other more stable institutions to ensure that they do not go down the same road to terminal dysfunctionality.
The IFP believes that the Bill will give the Minister the capability of ensuring greater adherence to the education policies of our country. But the hon Minister must ensure that any intervention is absolutely necessary and not used as a political tool to disrupt institutional autonomy. Thank you. [Applause.]