The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Thursday said the new Higher Education Amendment Bill seeks to give the state sweeping powers over universities and colleges and it would fight to have its provisions amended.

The opposition party objected to clauses in the bill that would introduce “nebulous” transformation goals and oversight mechanisms. It said this would give Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande power over areas that currently fell under the Council for Higher Education.

“At present the crucial matter of transformation is managed by stakeholders across the sector under the oversight of the Council for Higher Education. This clause makes no meaningful contribution to the existing law on the issue nor does it provide for real transformation at universities. Instead it serves only to provide the minister with potentially unfettered personal power,” DA higher education spokesperson Belinda Bozzoli said.

She said the bill, which was presented in Parliament on Wednesday, was ostensibly meant to introduce technical provisions but Nzimande had used the opportunity to add clauses that would enable him to dictate to universities and lessen the courts’ ability to review his decisions.

“Ever since universities came under the centralised authority of the Higher Education Act of 1997, the ANC-led government has bombarded them with dozens of small and large amendments of law and regulation in an attempt to bring them under its control.

“These amendments have gradually undermined university autonomy and, with it, threatened academic freedom as government increasingly positions itself as the ultimate gatekeeper of academic thought.

“Indeed both the Minister and the President have made it clear that they would prefer ‘patriotic’ universities to independent ones.”

Bazzoli also accused government of using funding mechanisms to manipulate decision-making at universities and using the student protests over fee hikes as an to pursue its own aims without addressing students’ true concerns.

“The DA will do all it can to ensure that these worrying new provisions of the Bill are properly examined, that the minister’s hunger for power is kept in check and that the financial crisis which confronts the sector is kept front and centre,” she said.

The bill, which was tabled in Parliament in November shortly after students staged an unprecendented protest at the legislature, enables the minister to withhold funding from universities in certain circumstances and to alter the procedures and mandates of higher education institutions.

The higher education department has maintained that it does not introduce major policy changes.