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Cape Town - Services sector education and training
authorities (Setas) will no longer be allowed to do as they please, Higher
Education Minister Blade Nzimande said on Thursday.
"For the past seven years, we have allowed them to do
what they like and that will have to change," he said at a pre-budget vote
media briefing in parliament.
He said a task team would be set up to "look into"
Setas, which he described as a "haven" for corruption.
"We want to know where do they spend their money? Who
are the private providers and how much are they using the public system?"
He said the government had developed the "highly
parasitic framework" and was now reconfiguring it.
South Africa has 21 Setas funded by 1% of the payrolls of
companies with profits of over R500 000. They provide post-school skills
training.
Nzimande wants them to have one standard constitution, to reduce the size of their boards, for him to participate in the selection of board members and to include two ministerial appointees on the boards.
While an agreement between the Seta Forum and Nzimande on transforming the Seta organisations had been reached, a Labour Court case between the department and the Services Seta was still under way.
Labour Court Judge Annelie Basson ruled earlier this month
that Nzimande did not have the legal power to impose a new constitution on the
Services Seta, and that the constitution he had tried to impose was in breach
of the Skills Development Act, Business Day reported at the time.
Basson also ruled that Nzimande's appointment of former ANC
office bearer Sihle Moon as the Seta's chairperson was invalid, as was his
appointment of a new council, one of whose members was Nolwande Mantashe, the
wife of ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe.
The Services Seta would return to court to ask it to
overturn Nzimande's decision to transfer R1bn from its bank account to the
National Skills Fund.
Parliament heard earlier this year that the fund had a
budget deficit of just under this amount.
The matter was taken to court by the Seta's former CEO Ivor
Blumenthal and eight others.
Nzimande said he did not want to talk about the "one
Seta that was toyi-toying" other than to say that the route the department
was taking on Setas was "non-negotiable".
"Something we are going to be fighting uncompromisingly
in the system is corruption. You can't be sitting on the board of a Seta and be
a beneficiary of the company. We are eliminating the possibility for some
people to start stealing money."
On the matter of the appointment of Mantashe's wife,
Nzimande said he found it "extremely offensive" that black African
women were still judged by who they were married to.
He said Nolwande Mantashe was a human resources professional
and "very good" at what she did, and that this was the only reason
for her appointment.
"Must they (black women) play no role in this country
because of who they are married to? I did not appoint Mrs Mantashe because she
is married to the secretary general. She is well respected in her profession...
We went through a very transparent process," he said.
