The South African Student Solidarity Foundation for Education (SASSFE) extends its heartfelt congratulations to Minister Buti Manamela and Deputy Minister Nomusa Dube-Ncube on their appointments to lead the Department of Higher Education and Training. We welcome this announcement by President Cyril Ramaphosa as an important moment for restoring credibility, competence, and accountability in a sector that holds the hopes of millions of young South Africans.

 

Minister Manamela brings a wealth of institutional knowledge, having served as Deputy Minister of Higher Education since 2017 and engaged closely with the dynamics of the post-school education and training system. He is widely respected across the post-school sector for his consistent and passionate advocacy for the transformation and revitalisation of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges as a viable, high-quality and accessible pathway for youth development, economic inclusion, and national skills development. His leadership of the Ministry offers renewed hope for long overdue reforms in this critical yet often neglected part of our education system. Dr Dube‑Ncube, a seasoned public administrator and former Premier of KwaZulu‑Natal, brings a wealth of executive and governance experience to the role, strengthening the leadership team at a time when the sector urgently needs stability, strategic direction, and oversight.

 

These appointments come at a time when the higher education system is faced with several challenges. A perfect storm of fiscal constraint, leadership lapses, and mounting student precarity threatens to unravel the hard-won gains since 1994. These systemic failures place the constitutional promise that “everyone has the right to further education” (Section 29(1)(b)) on contested terrain. The next chapter in our democracy will be defined, in part, by whether we can ensure that the right to education is not only protected in law but made real in the lives of poor and working-class students.

 

For SASSFE, this moment holds promise for realising our vision of a higher education system that is inclusive of the most vulnerable students. Founded in 2016 by successive cohorts of Wits University Black Students Society and SRC leaders—including the #FeesMustFall generation—SASSFE is a response to the urgent need for solidarity, accountability, and systemic reform in higher education. We channel alumni resources, networks, and expertise to keep financially vulnerable students in the system, strengthen governance at public institutions, and champion the revitalisation of historically Black universities and TVET colleges. We look forward to seeing the new Minister and Deputy Minister in the sector work towards keeping the doors of learning available to vulnerable students, through partnerships with organisations such as ours and others in the sector.

 

We are further inspired by the memory of the late Tiego Moseneke—BSS President (1983), liberation stalwart, and SASSFE’s founding spokesperson—who reminded us at our launch that “the burden of enabling poor but deserving students to study cannot rest on the poor themselves, but on all of us who once walked these corridors of learning.”

 

SASSFE stands ready to partner with the new Minister and Deputy Minister in building a responsive, inclusive, and future-oriented post-school education system—one that not only protects the right to further education, but unlocks its full potential as a driver of justice, dignity, and economic inclusion.