The announcement that government will invest in more black academics come as Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande announced that he will form an Inter-Ministerial Task Team to look into accelerating the production of black academics.
The Minister said this is part of the department’s goals to accelerate the transformation of universities across the country. He was tabling the Higher Education and Training Budget Vote in Parliament, in Cape Town this week.
The Minister’s announcement comes after he announced the formation of two programmes aimed at accelerating transformation last year.
“The staffing of South Africa’s Universities Framework and its New Generation of Academics Programme (nGAP) have to date filled 102 posts with black South Africans, 55 of them women. A further 100 new nGAP academics will be appointed in the coming months. Although these numbers are good, they are not good enough.
“I will soon announce a task team to look into and propose solutions to the obstacles to the production of South African black academics,” he said.
The Minister said university transformation remains a critical task and that there is a need to intensify the struggle to build transformed and non-racial universities.
He said the Higher Education Bill, which is currently in Parliament, tasks university councils with driving transformation much more vigorously.
