Interview with Blade Nzimande Blade shows us his cards Role in fighting IFP threat and working under Harry Gwala are some of the minister's contributions Vusumuzi Shabangu, The New Age, Johannesburg, 14 October 2015 Social media went abuzz. Questions about his political origins became the centrepiece of discussions. "Chris Hani was in the struggle, where was Blade?" some comments on Twitter read. As I converse with Blade Nzimande on the eve of a central committee meeting in Braamfontein about the ongoing questions raised about his background, he points out that one's history is a long process that cannot be easily replaced, nor destroyed, by "misleading information". FOCUSED: Minister Blade Nzimande says he knows he has detractors, but he tells his story for the benefit of others. PICTURE: ROBERT TLAPU The questions about his political origins, he says, are all but part of a long standing campaign by his detractors whose aim is not only to tarnish his image, but also to gain political mileage against his party. "I am not a Nelson Mandela who spent the entire prime of his life in jail. Nor am I a Solomon Mahlangu, who paid the supreme price. But I am proud of my modest contribution in the struggle against apartheid. "Not acting alone, but with many people I worked with, mainly in KZN, I also took part in the struggle of our people. "I know these things my detractors are trying to use against me, which I am not really very happy to respond to, but I will tell my story for the benefit of others rather than responding to these hooligans, the EFF." He says what many do not know is that although he was never an SRC leader, his political activism began while he was a student at university in 1976. He then participated in building self defence units alongside struggle stalwart Harry Gwala in trying to stop the infiltration of the IFP in KwaDambuza and other areas. "Well, my detractors say Blade Nzimande was from the IFP. "If I was from Inkatha, I would not have have survived KwaDambuza. "This is because around 1983 the IFP made its first attempt to enter Edendale by harassing people at KwaDambuza and I was then building units in the fight against them." He says Gwala drew them into underground ANC units to organise methods of counteracting Inkatha. The period saw a number of his comrades in the regional executive committee of the ANC, including Reggie Radebe and Skhumbuzo Ngwenya, being killed in the growing violence. "We used to sit in the regional executive committee and Harry Gwala would say to us: 'Who's going to be next'. At the same time there were massive upheavals, people fleeing places as far away as Mooi River to come to KwaDambuza which as I would say was your liberated zone," Nzimande says. He said the violence was so rife the KwaDambuza community had to put in place a safety centre to assist all the displaced families. "The main aim for Inkatha in KZN was that the ANC must not re-establish its structures. That is why on March 25, 1990, hardly six weeks after the unbanning of the ANC and the SACP, Inkatha and the police launched the seven-day war, using arms to overrun Edendale," he says. "I also started working with the ANC underground, not in the military, but on policy work, because I was an academic. "I also did a lot of work through a number of progressive NGOs in support of the job grading of the labour movement, both prior to and after the formation of Cosatu in 1985." While slowly taking tea, the conversation turns towards his close relations with former SACP leader Mzala Nxumalo. He says Nxumalo was the one who recruited him into the SACP. At that time Nzimande says he was publishing articles on the struggle and the role of Inkatha in working against liberation. The articles were mostly published using pseudonyms Nkosinathi Gwala and Praisely Mdluli. Unknown to him, these articles were drawing the attention of Nxumalo so that by the time he went to an education conference in London in 1988, which was convened by the late Harold Wolpe, Nxumalo knew that it was Nzimande who was using the names Nkosinathi Gwala and Praisely Mdluli. "He shocked me and said, 'Blade Nzimande. Are you not Nkosinathi Gwala? Are you not Praisely Mdluli?' He had developed an interest in my work. Because remember that he was writing that book on Chief Buthelezi: A Chief With A Double Agenda. I then learnt he was doing this as we were both trying to understand the role of Inkatha in the politics of the country," he says. It was then that Nxumalo instructed him to translate the Communist Party's programme, Path to Power, into Zulu. He says these detractors were also heedless of the fact he served in the interim leadership structures of both the ANC and the SACP in the Natal midlands in 1990, as well as early attempts to build trade unions like the National Education Union of South Africa. This he argues is more proof of his involvement within ANC structures. Reverting to his occupation, Nzimande singles out the milestone of assisting 1.5 million students through university as one of the ANC government's biggest achievements. For him what is most gratifying is that these beneficiaries of the National Students Financial Aid Scheme are not only young people from poor families, but mostly the first to graduate from university in their families. "Of course it is not enough. That is why we continue to look for more resources. Although one must be proud that under President Zuma the NSFAS has trebled. I doubt that there was a budget item that increased from R3bn to R9bn within five years," he says. However he believes it remains the government's role to exhaust all avenues in making sure no poor academically capable student gets excluded from university. "That is why we have extended NSFAS to technical and vocational training colleges formally known as FET colleges. "It's part of increasing this access to skills, professions, trades and occupations especially for South Africans who come from poor families, who happen to be predominantly black," Nzimande says. What is more concerning within the Department of Higher Education is that 21 years into a democratic South Africa, 83% of professors at institutions of higher learning are still white. He says that's why the department has put in place a programme called "staffing South African universities framework", which sponsors PhD students and aims at creating junior academic posts for black students who want to get into academia. "We have started with the first 125. In the social sciences and humanities we have 280 students doing PhDs we are funding. "That again we hope will make a difference in terms of the demographics of the professoriate in our country," he says. He admits part of what created the huge vacuum of black academics in institutions of higher learning was the recruitment drive made by the ANC-led government for bureaucrats in 1994. "Because of pressure of the new government needing skills from its cadres, we were then among those taken out of academia." These initiatives are what seem to be making Nzimande passionate about his cabinet post as it reconnects with his own original goal of producing scholars and academics. The challenge is that there are huge gaps between FETs, universities of technology and universities, making it difficult for graduates from training institutions in lower levels such as FETs to obtain qualifications of the same kind as at a higher level. "We now have a white paper which puts it clearly we must have an integrated system so that people could move say from a college to a university easily and not have these culs-de-sac that if you go to a university you have to start from scratch, even if you are pursuing a broadly similar degree," he says. "Some of our universities are buying into this energetically as there are some vice chancellors excited about these programmes." [email protected] From: http://tnaepaper.co.za/ -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
