Programme Director;
Deputy Minister Buti Manamela;
Director General’s Gwebinkundla Qonde
DDGs;
Members of the media;
Ladies and gentlemen

Good Afternoon 

COVID. -19 continues to take a heavy toll not only on the health of our people, but also on our people’s ability to earn a living, to feed themselves and their families, to learn and to develop, and to enjoy many of the basic freedoms that we daily take for granted.  

Like in all sectors of our lives, this pandemic presents a set of unprecedented challenges, which requires our collective action and responsibility as a society to act and behave in-line with the World Health Organisation (WHO) health guidelines in order to save lives.  

This period can be characterised by the poet and writer, ― Charles Dickens, as contained in this book A Tale of Two Cities: Charles said: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”   

I would like to reiterate that our sector’s response to COVID-19 is guided by measures announced by the National Command Council (NCC) and approved by Cabinet.   

Our sector has adopted the theme: Save The Academic, Year Save Lives.   

This morning I visited the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) to monitor the state of readiness and progress towards the planned phased return of students. TUT is by far the largest contact university not only in South Africa but in Africa. The socio-economic status of the students is 55% NSFAS beneficiaries and predominantly from the rural areas of our country.   

My impressions about TUT’s readiness is the fact that they have reprioritized funding to coverCOVID-19 related measures, and they repurposed one of their chemical engineering laboratories to produce sanitizers and disinfectants for the whole university and also supply surrounding communities. TUT also has a well-developed plan for multimodal remote learning, which will ensure that it reaches the remotest of their students anywhere in our country for academic support and delivery of learning materials. I am happy with the progress I saw there.  

With all the progress that I will be reporting on today, I remain gratified by the support and the exemplary leadership provided by President Ramaphosa and my colleagues at the National Command Council (NCC) in guiding our work at this difficult time.

 Within the Post School Education and Training Sector, I am still humbled by the cooperation and commitment of all members of the Ministerial Task Team, chaired by our Deputy Minister Buti Manamela comprising of SACPO, USAf, Trade Unions, SAUS, SAFETSA and quality councils. The task team continues to meet weekly and make inputs into our overall strategy and response to this pandemic. `I remain grateful to the comrades and colleagues.

On higher health