The SACP has noted the announcements made today by the Minister of Higher Education when he delivered his budget vote today to the National Assembly. We welcome the measures announced and are encouraged by the bold announcements made by the Minister in order to make higher education accessible to the majority of our youth.

The SACP welcomes the effort that the Ministry and the department are putting on reviving the FET Colleges and linking these colleges to an aggressive formal skilling of the working class and the poor. Society must be mobilised to rally behind the vision of the Minister as articulated in the NSDS III. In this regard the transformation of the post schooling system and the SETA’s to be able to articulate cannot be overemphasised. For the New Growth Path, the Industrial Policy Action Plan and our Human Resources Development Strategy to be a success the skilling of our people must be fast tracked and revolutionarised.

Whilst the state must play a leading role utilising resources at its disposal and leveraging the Stae Owned enterprises to implement the manifesto commitments of playing a developmental role, it is crucial that industry comes to the party in the skills revolution.

The SACP is quite impressed about the radical measures to improve access of the poor to higher education opportunities. We call on government to continue increasing its investment in this front. The education and skilling of the working class is the most effective liberatory tool that an ANC led government can bestow upon our youth. Higher education must be completely decomodified in our country. The SACP knows that under capitalism education is used as a tool to oppress and exclude. It is for this reason that the struggle for quality free public higher education must always be linked to the struggle for socialism.

The SACP welcomes the announcement that MEDUNSA will be de-merged from University of Limpopo and that a dedicated medical faculty will be build in Limpopo. We challenge government to continue to expand medical training facilities in order for us to meet the human resource challenge for the success of the NHI. In this regard the SACP hopes medical faculties will be an integral part of new universities in Mpumalanga and Northern Cape.

The request to NSFAS to remove from the credit bureaux all students they have blacklisted must be implemented by the NSFAS without hesitation. The SACP hopes our universities will respond accordingly. These measures are a further victory for the SACP led campaign against unfair blacklisting. Equally the announcement that NSFAS will no longer charge interest rate from day one of awarding loans to student is a huge step towards focussing the model of NSFAS to its core mandate as opposed to it being run as a profit making entity.

We are encouraged as the SACP by the progress we steadily making towards universal access to education by the poor of our country. Our struggle for free education is on track. Whilst there are challenges, we dare not despair.