From firsthand experience, I have come to the realisation that lecturers attached to TVET and community colleges have neither the requisite industry experience nor sufficient insight into the practice-based nature of teaching technical/vocational skills to impart to their students.
An article in the Sunday Times, “Why TVETs are failing our youth” (June 14), opened my mind to the virtues of the recently introduced transformation of programmes in TVET colleges, particularly the jettisoning of hundreds of outdated programmes.
I reflected on the interesting conversation in my capacity as a former member of councils in both TVET and community colleges in South Africa, extending over 11 years.
My mind immediately wandered to the suitability of the qualifications of the current crop of lecturers in these two categories of colleges.
I understand that there are reskilling/rerouting programmes initiated by the department of higher education & training to make up for the shortfall of lecturers — taking former schoolteachers and immersing them in the college system without considering suitability for purpose. I also understand the historical background to these inevitable personnel deployments.
The point I am getting at is: did the minister consider how he could accommodate people who have worked in the private sector all their lives or for extended time intervals to teach in TVET and community colleges, including recently retired people/artisans/practitioners?
The programme transformation and the invitation of the private sector-based lecturer initiatives should take place simultaneously to enable a smooth transformation
— Mawonga Deliwe
Granted, these people will most likely have limited teaching experience, but they will certainly have sufficient experience in mentoring and workplace-based technical/vocational skills.
If such a policy currently exists, where is the document in which the ministry reviews the college programmes? What about the current lecturer vacancies in the colleges?
Did guidelines go out to the colleges from the department on how the leadership could accommodate or make concessions in their lecturer post adverts to ramp up the targeted skilled people’s interest in the public college system?
My view is that the programme transformation and the invitation of the private sector-based lecturer initiatives should take place simultaneously to enable a smooth transformation. This would boost the success prospects of the envisaged revolution.
— Mawonga Deliwe, retired teacher, training college principal and former lecturer and post-doctoral research fellow at Fort Hare University
Draconian socialist overreach
Mmusi Maimane and Bosa’s Fair Pay Bill claims to champion workplace equity by banning companies from asking for an applicant’s past payslip. In reality, it is a piece of draconian overreach that treats private employers like the enemy, and it is no surprise that leftists have enthusiastically jumped on the bandwagon.
Let’s follow the money. Union politburos are funded by payroll deductions; higher state-mandated wages mean fatter union coffers. By turning voluntary job interviews into a legal minefield, this bill protects a privileged, unionised elite while locking out millions of desperate, unemployed South Africans who would gladly negotiate their own entry into the workforce. Last I checked, we are living in a market-friendly economy with a Bill of Rights.
The DA is entirely correct to oppose this legislation. In our economy, a payslip is the foundational cornerstone of consumer credit, banking risk and corporate planning. Forcing businesses to hire completely blind based on rigid, state-mandated salary bands strips away the fundamental freedom of contract.
We absolutely need fair playing fields, but we also need reciprocity. If a jobseeker chooses to withhold their salary history, that is their right. However, the employer must retain an equal, reciprocal right: to either walk away from the negotiation or pitch an offer based strictly on what their internal metrics say the role is worth.
South Africa is desperate for economic growth and flexible hiring, not more socialistic red tape that suffocates the very businesses trying to keep the country afloat.
— Nathan Motjuwadi, Cape Town
Sorrow in my heart
The word “foreigners” painfully cuts through my heart each time I hear it uttered. I prefer migrants. It sounds much better to the ear and is light to the heart.
Looking at your image with a child innocently unaware of his fate under the headline “3,000 ‘foreigners’ opt to go home” on your front page (June 14) cuts even deeper sorrow in my heart.
Yet the issue causing this sad problem — a president pressured by his own issues, diverted from this key issue and distracted by his impeachment — makes this a self-serving case. Indeed, how does a sitting head of state operate under these sad circumstances?
I have no option but to support their decision to go back home, not through hatred but for their own interests and safety, especially their children
— Moikwatlhai Seitisho, Phuthaditjhaba
Wouldn’t it be proper that he step down to address his personal challenges and for his deputy to take over to deal with this extremely sensitive matter properly? While I am concerned by the crime perpetrated by those who are undocumented, my heart goes out to each one of them.
I am neither xenophobic nor Afrophobic, but the escalation of various crimes and drug and human trafficking is an insult to the national pride and ethic of South African values. I therefore have no option but to support their decision to go back home, not through hatred but for their own interests and safety, especially their children.
— Moikwatlhai Seitisho, Phuthaditjhaba
Capitalism must answer for our ills
Barney Mthombothi wants to kick the last breath out of the SACP.
Mthombothi is furious at the spectacular Conference of the Left convened by the SACP. Evidently, Mthombothi is a lackey of the capitalist class.
The bourgeoisie is interested in an ANC that refuses to implement the basic demands of the Freedom Charter. When communists insist on what is the basis of the tripartite alliance — radical economic transformation — suddenly the ANC is not a good story for investors.
The Council of the Left will capitalise on local government elections to form governance that will place the interests of the working class and the poor at the centre of local economic development and quality service delivery. The bourgeois mass media can scream at the highest pitch, but the clock of history cannot be turned back. Capitalism must answer to the working class and the poor for poverty, unemployment, inequality, corruption and unacceptable levels of crime.
— Mzukisi Gaba, via e-mail
R700m for sweet nothing
Exactly a year ago, on June 10 2025, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced his fancy new R700m “national convention” — a national dialogue billed as involving all South Africans in a conversation to rescue and save South Africa.
A very expensive talk shop, despite us electing 490 very expensive MPs to parliament every five years — not counting nine provincial legislatures, each with its own set of expensive MPLs, a premier, a cabinet of 10 and a speaker and thousands of councillors and mayors across the land. And yet our president and the ANC claimed not to know what was bothering South Africans.
A whole year later and what has been achieved? An expensive and glitzy one-day wonder and talk shop last August from The Hollow Man, and then nothing, just silence. And where is our R700m?
A year ago, at the announcement, I wrote that Ramaphosa’s plan to convene a national convention was just another disappointing step in his long history of plans and promises that have all come to naught.
The same way his great national convention has gone. Nowhere. Please can we have our R700m back?
— Mark Lowe, Durban
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