‘An educationist should never be made a minister of education, just like a military person should not be made minister of defence,” Kader Asmal, then water and forestry minister, told the Sunday Times in 1996.
‘They bring their own activist ideas, but there is more to it than that [activism].”
President Thabo Mbeki, who has in the past said he does not read newspapers, must have missed the story, for he named Asmal, the educationist and intellectual maestro, Minister of Education in his first Cabinet in 1999.
For the past month, Asmal’s tenure as political head of the education system has come under sharp scrutiny. His announcement in December, to much fanfare, that the number of learners who passed the 2003 matric exams is higher than it has ever been (73% compared with 69% the previous year) unleashed a torrent of analytical debate and scepticism about the meaning and reliability of the results.
This is in sharp contrast with the acclaim that initially greeted his appointment to education’s top job. He inherited a system ravaged by apartheid, and only faintly improved by his predecessor,
Sibusiso Bengu. The main legacy of Bengu, many say, was sheer confusion, particularly in the nearly incomprehensible new Curriculum 2005. To his eternal credit, Asmal bit the bullet and ordered a review of that curricular mess. He took immense political flak, but the result of the review was spectacular: a user-friendly curriculum that, if teachers are trained adequately (and that is still a big if), has every prospect of being the most progressive in the world.
But the jury remains out on whether the former law academic has been a success at his post.
As with his term as water and forestry minister, Asmal is still plagued by accusations that he rushes projects through without properly weighing up the consequences.
Asmal’s detractors say his rush to reduce the number of tertiary institutions, after the 1990s policy commitment to ‘massification” of higher education, has not won him many new friends.
And his decision to make seven, instead of six, the age at which children would start school – only for the decision to be reversed following a Constitutional Court case – caused him to lose face with thousands of parents who saw their children lose a year in their education careers.
But he appears to have as many fans as detractors.
Asmal was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize in August 2002 ‘for putting human and environmental needs above commercial and political interests when he was minister of water affairs and forestry”.
Guy Preston, the national programme leader for the Working for Water Programme and Asmal’s former adviser, describes the education minister as a ‘visionary, a hard taskmaster and output-oriented”.
‘He deals with detail, reads quickly and interrogates everything put before him. Most of what he did at water affairs and forestry has been lauded all over the world,” says Preston.
‘For example, the Working for Water Programme is the biggest conservation programme in Africa and has won 38 awards. It got off the ground because of Kader Asmal,” says Preston.
He adds that the accusation that Asmal is obsessed with ‘delivery-now and sustainability-later approach” is simplistic.
‘Asmal’s water legislation was all about sustainability in the
management of water resources. Sustainability is a process, something that one builds towards. But of course we can’t foresee everything. Certainly there are decisions we took in Working for Water, that, in retrospect, were not optimal. But that does not mean the programme is not relevant or sustainable,” says Preston.
Andrew Miller, the CEO of Project Literacy, says while the past 10 years have seen an improvement in policies regarding adult education, ‘actual delivery was found wanting. Adult education remains the smallest funded, allocated between 1% and 2% only of provincial education budgets.
‘When he gets questioned about that, he says the national department makes policy, it is provinces that implement. But his leadership style is such that he has been forceful where he has wanted to push things.”
Sipho Seepe, acting vice-chancellor of Vista University, calls Asmal’s style, including his fondness for ‘centralising”, an example of ‘the undemocratic streak that characterises” him. Seepe says Asmal’s style, which is one that is unable to accept failure, is managerial as opposed to consultative. Consequently he is regularly taken to court ‘to have sense knocked into his head”.
Seepe points to Asmal’s riding roughshod over the University of Transkei’s desire, along with its merger partners Border Technikon and Eastern Cape Technikon, to be known as the Walter Sisulu University for Science and Technology, as an example of this managerial centralism. He also cites Asmal’s very public lashing of Unisa for daring to go ahead and appoint Barney Pityana as its new vice-chancellor in 2002, in defiance of his explicit request that all institutions heading for mergers refrain from making senior appointments.
‘His handling of the [then University of Durban-Westville vice-chancellor Dr Saths] Cooper issue is another example of his hurrying for headlines without providing reflective assessment before he goes headlong into issues.
‘He instituted an inquiry [into governance and management
problems at the University of Durban-Westville] and when Bongani Khumalo [the chair of Transnet who conducted the inquiry] came with a report that was damning [of Cooper] he said there was no time to remove Cooper. He should have thought about that before starting the inquiry.
‘On a scale of one to 10, I would give him four – which in terms of matric means he would have done very well,” says Seepe.
As far as the improvements in the matric pass rate, Seepe is of the view that ‘we are a people who take the issue of miracles too far – we want to achieve excellent results without putting in the necessary rigour that such excellence demands”.
Thulas Nxesi, South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) general secretary, says Asmal has ‘done well overall because he had learned to consult with stakeholders midway through his term”.
He says that Sadtu’s differences with Asmal relate to issues such as the minister wanting private-sector-like performance evaluation systems without regard for factors such as the available resources at schools.
Nxesi says Asmal has also failed to ensure coordination among provincial education departments.
‘Gauteng is always doing its own thing and there is still no solution to the management system crisis in the Eastern Cape,” he says.
Despite the division of opinions, Asmal’s stature within the African National Congress remains secure. He returned to the country in 1990, after many years as dean of law at Trinity College, Dublin, to an academic post at the University of the Western Cape, and was soon playing a central role in the thicket of constitutional talks then gathering momentum.
Legend has it that the first draft of the Bill of Rights was drafted on his kitchen table in Dublin.
An ANC insider and educationist says Asmal is respected in the ANC because of his record of getting things done and his independent thinking.
‘He has remarkably high standing within the ANC. That does not mean he is close to the leadership or he is an insider.
‘He is chairperson of the conventional arms committee and the ANC disciplinary committee, and in 1999 was asked to help arrange for the inauguration [of Mbeki’s presidency]. This shows they respect him and trust him.
‘Even though he is an independent thinker, he says what he thinks has got to be said and is known to have a view on all things. That is why he is so highly regarded.” Asmal is fourth on the list of ANC members returning to Parliament and was elected the eighth most popular ANC leader at the party’s national conference in December 2002.
Independent political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi says Asmal’s standing within the party is unlikely to be affected by his performance as minister.
‘The ANC does not pay attention to education as I think it should. Individual education ministers and MECs [provincial ministers] have been developing education policy away from the ANC. We have not seen the ANC actively inform education policy.
‘The ANC has become more alienated from what goes on in the government as far as education is concerned. It is therefore difficult to say what Asmal’s standing is as a minister.”
Matshiqi highlights Asmal’s playing of the media. ‘He appears more like a spin doctor than a minister. Maybe that can be explained by referring to his time at water and forestry, where quantity was the only indicator of significance. He presents you with a house painted in bright colours on the outside, without looking sufficiently at what is inside the house,” concludes Matshiqi.
With the imminent retirement of the sickly Abdullar Omar as Minister of Transport, will the party call on its respected Mr Fix-It to sort out that national problem area? One thing is for certain, though: nobody would accuse him as transport minister of inflating figures.