Andy Duffy
Sibusiso Bengu hates the spotlight, and it’s not hard to see why. Pinned down last week on prime-time TV, the minister of education resorted to pathos to get himself off the hook. “It isn’t my fault,” Bengu pleaded, after being confronted with yet more evidence that education is going down the tube.
It’s not the first time Bengu has trotted out this excuse. He used it early last year when he killed the disastrous voluntary severance scheme; he used it at the start of this year when he commented on a miserable 1997 matric performance; he used it last month when he admitted in Parliament that education is in crisis.
Whether or not Bengu’s got a point, the impression is still created that he is happy enough to accept the perks of his ministerial position, but he fudges it on the question of responsibility.
It’s not, of course, that Bengu stands apart from the rest of the Cabinet on this. It’s more that his portfolio is in particularly dire need of leadership – of the outwardly courageous type.
There’s much to be courageous about. Setting aside for the moment the threatened teachers’ strike, the state of play is thus: the teaching profession has lost thousands of its best teachers to generous pay-off packages; salaries for the remaining teachers gobble more than 90% of the education budget; and there is little money for textbooks, training, and, in the Eastern Cape, lights and water.
It is a nightmarish concoction, featuring as its central element the government’s attempt to overcome the legacy of apartheid education, with limited money and even scarcer know- how.
Bengu’s buck-passing is justified to a certain extent. The Constitution does indeed prevent him from having much say about the management and funding of provincial education. Education in some provinces has also been crippled by corruption and bitter fighting between political and public service leaders – witness the departure in recent months of a string of education MECs and department heads.
But the minister and his officials are painfully aware that they draw up and lead national policy. Bengu can blame the provinces as much as he likes, but he knew the score long before his ministry decided to pile on the pressure. That the national department is going ahead with its new curriculum in the face of such obstacles suggests little has been learned from the past four years.
Bengu also cannot escape the fact that he heads a ministry that wants thousands of state teachers axed in the year leading up to an election. And even before that gets under way, Bengu is poised for a bloody battle with one of his party’s strongest allies, the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu).
In the face of such monumental crises, observers are wondering how Bengu has managed to survive so long. It’s simple: he is no fool, and neither are his party’s leaders.
The 64-year-old has previously been described as more of a gentleman, an academic type, someone more at home with writing worthy tomes – his works include Mirror or Model? The Church in an Unjust World – than a player in the back-stabbing world of high-level politics.
Many in the teaching profession like him because, well, he used to be a teacher, starting in 1952 at a primary school and ending in 1976 after he had founded and headed the widely respected Dlangeza High School. Bengu loves to talk about when he was a headmaster, when his teachers worked or got the sack.
Many in the tertiary education sector like him because he is also of their world, serving as a professor at the University of Zululand from 1977 and heading Fort Hare in 1991.
He has a Unisa degree in history, a PhD in political science from the University of Geneva, and, more recently, a doctorate in law from California State University.
His background is also, however, deeply political. In the 1970s Bengu was secretary general of the Inkatha Freedom Party, quitting and leaving the country following a torrid run-in with Mangosuthu Buthelezi. The principle of their argument still divides the IFP: developing the party as a democratic, mass-based organisation, rather than as Buthelezi’s personal empire.
While he was overseas, Bengu forged ties with the African National Congress, particularly Oliver Tambo. He has rarely put a foot wrong since then in ensuring he has the ear of the people who matter in the party.
Bengu’s negotiating and diplomacy skills are widely respected within party ranks. Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, in particular, thinks Bengu’s low-key, consensual approach is exactly right for education, given the politically dangerous challenges of transformation. What, insiders say, would have been the outcome of four years under Nkosazana Zuma?
Bengu has steered through Parliament ground-breaking legislation such as the South African Schools Act, and the Higher Education Bill, with barely a whimper from those who might have felt threatened back in 1994.
At every step of the way, Bengu has ensured his back is covered politically, and that every relevant interest party is on board. Even days before the threatened Sadtu strike, department officials believed that months of negotiation had left only the thinnest gap between the government and the union – over a mechanism of retrenchment drawn up at national level.
If that’s true, it is extraordinary. Few in government question the union’s ability to close down state schooling. Yet Bengu and his officials seem to believe they have largely won the battle in getting Sadtu to accept the principle of forced job losses.
Still, bleating “It isn’t my fault” is never likely to endear Bengu to the masses. It has merely set a tone that has permeated the entire state education system.
It’s all the more pitiful because once Bengu’s mantra used to be, “This will be the year of delivery.”
Born: In 1934, at Kranskop Mission Station
Defining characteristics: Modest and unassuming, to an almost painful extent, and bookish
Favourite people: Hard-working, disciplined teachers
Least favourite people: Ill- disciplined, lazy teachers
Likely to say: “The buck doesn’t stop here”
Least likely to say: “My mistake, sorry”