Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana’s blistering attack on the national Department of Education this week has blown the lid off tensions simmering between the two departments since 2001. Until Mdladlana’s outburst, the rift had been officially denied.
At a North West Growth and Development Summit at Sun City over the weekend, Mdladlana deviated from his speech and attacked the education department’s lethargy in its part in the national skills development strategy.
“I am very frustrated as minister of labour,” The Star< quoted the minister as saying. "We have to link education with training — what is frustrating is when you can’t help because you train people and they don’t know what to do after that, and they come back to you. And you don’t know what button to push when people are in need."
Mdladlana said it was a nightmare to review the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) — the mechanism meant to set standards for all types of learning programmes —with the Department of Education to ensure a seamless link between training and education. “All we are doing is fighting for turf. There is a need to have education and training under one roof.”
His spokesperson, Monwabisi Maclean, confirmed that Mdladlana had deviated from his speech.
The minister’s onslaught follows three years of toing and froing between the departments over implementation of the NQF, which according to Dave Balt, president of the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa, has been the cause of “enormous frustration across the education and training sector”.
In July 2001 the Department of Education appointed a study team to review implementation of the NQF, which it completed the following April. After public comment, the two departments formed an interdepartmental task team that released a consultative document last year.
“Since then, for more than a year, no further communication has been received from the task team,” said Balt.
In 2001 the M&G exposed the rift between the two departments following a Skills for Productive Citizenship conference. Despite repeated calls at the conference for interdepartmental cooperation, the education department was conspicuously absent. The M&G’s story drew a blanket denial of problems from both departments.
Mathula Magubane, chief director of communications for the education department, said about the outburst: “The [labour] minister was expressing an opinion within a specific context; therefore I don’t think that it is necessary that we respond to it.”
She said Education Minister Naledi Pandor was in the United Kingdom and would speak to Mdladlana when she returned. She also declined to comment on progress with NQF implementation.
Samuel Isaacs, executive officer of the South African Qualifications Authority, said: “The review of the NQF has now entered its fourth year with no resolution.
“This, we believe, is detrimental to the national project and we share the labour minister’s concerns.”