Open Letter To Blade by #DownWithDirectPayment #BladeMustGo

 Revolutionary Greetings

We scribe to  your office with the clarity of thought and mind when it comes to the direct payment system. Before we dwell on this matter, we would like to unequivocally reject this system and reject the companies that come with it.

Why do we reject this?

We reject this system because it is patently corrupt and seeks to benefit the four unknown companies, namely, Norraco, eZaga (Access Bank Nigeria), Coinvest Africa and Tenet Technology. Another reason why we reject this system is due to the reality that NSFAS has not developed the capacity to directly pay students. In a nutshell, this so-called direct payment is not direct payment but indirect payment not fundamentally different to the previous decentralized system. Another  fundamental reason why we reject this system is due to the fact that consultation was not done. In fact, NSFAS and you Minister Nzimande imposed this system when it was clear that SAUS was operating outside of the mandate of SRCs. Another reason why we reject this is due to the exploitative nature of the charges that these bogus companies impose on Students. The other reason lies with the fact that this system is unreliable and has opened up students to scams. Lastly, this is an abuse of taxpayers money and it must be treated as such.

Minister Nzimande, you preside over a department that has over sixty per cent of the student populace dependent on NSFAS. This means when the unregistered and unrecognized companies (FSCA has no record of their existence) fail to do their job as they are currently doing in TVET Colleges we will have a crisis of magnificent proportions, as we are witnessing it now. This means that out of the +/- two million students in the sector, approximately one million and two hundred thousand students will be affected. When we further break it down +/- six hundred thousand students - seven hundred thousand students will be affected. This means that over thirty percent of the students will be directly impacted. As things stand, in most universities approximately sixty to seventy percent of the students have not received their allowances for July. This is a self-manufactured crisis that you have presided over due to your Neoliberal model in the department.
Furthermore, we would like to highlight the fact that the attitude displayed by these companies towards students is consistent with the arrogance displayed by NSFAS and your Department, with your Office being a particular case. We would like to put this on record that the rot starts from the head, and your inability to listen to reason has led us to this blind alley. It is very unbecoming for someone who calls himself a Communist to subject hundreds of thousands if not over a million students to an exploitative system which is more exploitative than the banks. At one point in your careerist political journey, you were at the forefront of campaigns against the Financial Sector when you still served as the GS of the now moribund South African Communist Party (SACP). You have reversed the gains of the Freedom Charter, and have undermined the constitutional fundamentals of our robust democracy by making it clear that South Africa does not belong to all who live in it, but to the rich and your upstart capitalist friends who are now exploiting students through companies that cannot be tracked by the FSCA.

We have heard it through the grapevine that this coming Sunday (9th of July, 2023) you will be in a meeting with the sellout union called South African Union of Students (SAUS). You will be presenting your MTT report while students are dying of hunger and do not have the means to go back to campus because the companies you imposed through NSFAS and directly yourself have not disbursed allowances. Instead, they are stealing these allowances wholesale (Norraco and Tenet to be more specific and direct). In that meeting we would like you to reconsider your decision and immediately reverse these bogus companies or else the country will burn because of your arrogance and hate towards the children of the working class, peasantry and the poor (both urban and rural).

Our Demands

No struggle lacks demands, thus, we will table our demands and they are as follows:

1. Immediate scrapping of direct payment.

2. Decentralization of NSFAS with NSFAS reverting back to the system of having a deployees in an institution.

3. FREE EDUCATION NOW as this is a matter that would not exist if our education system was decommodified.

4. The upstart capitalist companies must return the monies they received from the state through the tender system. This means their contracts must be canceled with immediate effect.

5. Your resignation letter with immediate effect, because you have failed to lead this department. Ever since you returned students are being defunded and all kinds of corrupt shenanigans like the two hundred and sixteen thousand ghost students which were discovered by an independent report are normalized.

6. Disbandment and termination of the tenure of SAUS and a Congress of SAUS must sit within sixty days to elect a new structure.

These are our demands and we will fight for them.


Conclusion

In the words of the Revolutionary icon of the Liberation Struggle, Mama Winnie Nomzamo Madikizela-Mandela, "Singayisusa nanini sithanda"

We hope you will find the above in order


Revolutionary Regards

#DownWithDirectPayment
#BladeMustGo