Minister Buti Manamela: National PSET Infrastructure Strategic Workshop

Infrastructure for a Skills Revolution

Programme Director,

Deputy Minister Dube-Ncube,

Minister of Finance, Mr Enoch Godongwana,

Colleagues in government and in our post-school institutions,

Student leaders, organised labour and our partners,

Ladies and gentlemen.

Good morning.

We have come together to decide what infrastructure South Africa needs to give practical meaning to a skills revolution.

That requires us to look beyond the next building. We must ask what opportunities our people need, where those opportunities are missing, and what kind of post-school system can support the country's development.

The answer must embrace universities, technical and vocational education and training colleges, and community education and training colleges. It must connect their different strengths. It must also confront a simple reality: an opportunity that exists on paper, but is too far away, too expensive to reach or too poorly equipped to provide a good education, is not yet a meaningful opportunity.

Infrastructure is where these questions become concrete. Our ambitions need somewhere to live. They need functioning workshops, laboratories, classrooms and libraries. They need digital networks. And the students who use them need safe places to live and study. The decisions we make must begin with that purpose.

The geography of opportunity

Our country still carries the geography of exclusion. Apartheid located educational opportunity and economic power in ways that denied the majority a fair chance. Distance remains part of the price many people pay for that history.

We cannot claim to have transformed access if a young person's prospects still depend so heavily on the address of their family home. Nor can we build a productive economy while leaving large parts of the country without the institutions and capabilities that development requires.

This helps explain why communities feel so strongly about having a college or university nearby. Sometimes it seems that almost every town wants an institution of its own. We should worry more if communities stopped asking for places of learning.

Behind those requests are parents who want their children to have a future, traditional leaders who want development in their communities, and young people who do not want leaving home to be the only route to opportunity.

We must take seriously the aspirations for colleges in Pongola and Lemana, for university provision in Sekhukhune, and for stronger provision of mining-related education. Taking an aspiration seriously means examining it properly and responding honestly.

It cannot mean promising a separate institution wherever a request is made. Our responsibility is to plan for the whole country.

Population change, learner demand, travel distances, existing provision and the development needs of a region must inform where we expand. Spatial equity must carry real weight in those choices.

In one area the right response may be a new campus. Elsewhere it may be an expanded college, a shared specialist facility or a local learning centre connected to a stronger institutional network. The test is whether people gain access to worthwhile learning and a credible pathway onwards.

A national plan must be able to explain those choices, including to communities whose preferred proposal cannot be taken forward in its present form.

A system with different strengths

We must therefore start with a clear account of what we have, what condition it is in, and what pressures it will face.

The infrastructure survey gives us an initial picture of substantial needs. It is a starting point for verification, not a completed, costed national plan. We need to relate the condition and use of our assets to enrolment, demographic change and the skills required in different parts of the economy.

That includes asking where existing space is underused, where provision is overcrowded, and where there is no adequate provision at all. A list of buildings cannot answer those questions on its own. Our universities need teaching spaces and laboratories that support quality at growing scale. They need research infrastructure through which South Africa can generate knowledge, solve difficult problems and develop new industries. Their public mission also embraces scholarship, critical citizenship and the cultural and intellectual life of our communities. Investment must also confront inequalities between institutions, rather than allowing those with the greatest inherited advantages to move further ahead.

Our TVET colleges need workshops in which practical training is genuinely practical. A qualification in a technical field must be supported by appropriate machines, tools and equipment, with the capacity to keep them working. Simulation can extend learning, but it cannot become an excuse for denying students experience with the equipment and processes they will encounter at work.

The infrastructure plan must connect college provision to apprenticeships, workplace learning and the changing needs of industry. Agriculture, manufacturing, mining and the transition to cleaner energy all raise questions about what we teach and the facilities through which we teach it.

Community education and training requires equal seriousness. Adults seeking literacy, further learning or practical skills need dependable places to learn, including in rural communities. Secure and suitable premises, accessible facilities and reliable connectivity are basic conditions for that work. CET cannot remain the part of the system we remember after the larger institutions have made their claims.

We must make it easier for learners to progress between these parts of the system.

Shared hubs and facilities can help where their location and governance make sense. So can agreements that enable a college or community learning centre to draw on nearby institutional resources. But sharing must be organised and funded. It cannot depend on goodwill alone.

Digital infrastructure belongs inside this vision. Connectivity, devices and accessible learning platforms can widen the reach of good teaching and give smaller institutions access to resources they could not provide alone. Institutions also need reliable data systems and the ability to protect them.

For rural learners, however, an online connection must never become our answer to every missing lecturer, laboratory or learning space. Digital provision should improve the quality of their education, not give us a cheaper vocabulary for accepting inferior provision.

A place to live and a place to learn

Student accommodation is central to this agenda. The conditions in which students live affect whether they can attend, study and complete their qualifications.

We need accommodation that is safe, of decent quality, affordable and accessible to students with disabilities. Functioning water and sanitation, fire safety and space to study are basic requirements. Its location matters. A bed that requires an exhausting or unsafe journey to campus does not solve the whole problem.

Our response must cover the quality and use of existing residences, recovery of stalled developments and expansion where verified demand justifies it. Institutions, municipalities and housing partners need to plan together, including for water, electricity and transport. The accommodation debate cannot end at the boundary of the building.

There is room here for substantial partnership and investment. Public and institutional land may help, where its legal status and suitability have been established. Private providers and development finance institutions can contribute. Clear standards, fair contracts and dependable administration are essential if that contribution is to serve students well.

We should examine how recurring accommodation expenditure can support sustainable investment in good-quality supply. But the NSFAS accommodation allowance is support for an eligible student, not a blank cheque for a developer. Payments must be dependable, subject to confirmed student funding, accreditation and valid leases. Those conditions cannot be assumed away or treated as a guarantee of future income. We must protect the student while building a model that can last.

The accommodation sessions must identify what can realistically improve readiness for 2027, alongside the longer-term programme. Students cannot live in a pipeline.

Repair and expansion belong together

We must also care for what the public has already paid for. Neglected maintenance damages the learning environment and turns manageable repairs into expensive failures. Stalled projects lock up resources while communities wait for the promised benefit.

That calls for a serious programme of maintenance, recovery and completion. It does not justify a blanket rule that no new infrastructure can proceed until every existing problem is fixed. Such a rule would preserve exclusion in places that have too little provision to begin with.

We must do both, in a planned order: protect and improve existing capacity while expanding where the evidence shows it is needed.

There may be early gains from restoring idle TVET workshop equipment, bringing usable university teaching or laboratory space back into service, or fixing last-mile connectivity. Appropriate shared public premises could support CET under proper agreements. Resolving a specific obstacle might also unlock a nearly completed project. These are candidates for examination, not approved investments or projects we can declare ready from this podium. Safety, cost, ownership, procurement and the capacity to operate the facility still have to be established.

Every investment must include its life after construction.

A laboratory needs technicians and consumables. A workshop needs trained staff and maintained equipment. Every campus needs utilities, security and a maintenance budget. We must design for accessibility, energy and water resilience, and changing learning needs from the outset.

Finding the capital and building the capability

The scale of this work requires a financing strategy. Institutional resources and public allocations will remain important, but we must examine a wider range of partnerships and appropriate financing arrangements.

National Treasury's Budget Facility for Infrastructure offers a structured route for assessing proposals at different stages of preparation. It is not an automatic allocation of money. A promising proposal may need support to become a properly prepared project before a financing decision can be made. That preparation is legitimate work and must itself be planned.

We should engage the Development Bank of Southern Africa and other appropriate partners on preparation, finance and implementation support. Their involvement must strengthen our ability to deliver, including by transferring skills into our institutions and the Department.

We should also examine whether suitable projects can attract long-term institutional investment. In discussions involving the Public Investment Corporation and the Government Employees Pension Fund, we must be clear about their different roles. The GEPF owns pension assets; the PIC manages investments under mandates. Workers' retirement savings carry obligations to those workers. Any investment must meet the relevant requirements for risk and return. Social value does not remove that responsibility.

Different needs will require different funding models.

We should not force a rural learning centre to resemble a commercial property investment before recognising its public value. Nor should we disguise an unaffordable arrangement by calling it a partnership.

For every model, we must understand who carries the risk, what students and institutions will pay, and whether the arrangement remains sustainable over its life. Capability matters just as much, the department must have the people, ICT systems and reliable information needed to plan and manage a national programme. Its own working accommodation and regional points of service must support the work and make the Department accessible to the people it serves. We need the ability to assess proposals, oversee procurement and contracts, track implementation and act when performance falls short.

Institutions need that capability too. Implementing partners must have clear responsibilities and be held to them.

Municipal and other public authorities must be involved early enough to resolve land, planning and services questions. Public Works and Infrastructure and Infrastructure South Africa can help with public assets and project preparation; Human Settlements and municipalities with accommodation, land and services. Industry must contribute to equipment and workplace learning, alongside the roles of institutions and appropriate development-finance partners. Students and staff must help shape facilities that they will use every day.

We cannot outsource the responsibility to know whether public money is producing public value.

Rebuilding confidence

Colleagues, we must speak honestly about our own commitments.

We said we would have an infrastructure plan by the end of September. We have not met that commitment. I take responsibility for ensuring that we put this right. Our answer must be a credible route to completion, with accountable people, clear decisions and dates that we can defend. This workshop cannot be a substitute for the overdue plan. It must settle the work, responsibilities and timetable needed to finalise it.

The years of waiting since the announcement of the proposed University of Ekurhuleni also require candour. Communities are entitled to know what has been done, what remains unresolved and what must happen next. Another optimistic date, unsupported by the work required to meet it, would deepen the problem.

Trust will be rebuilt through accurate information and visible progress. That includes being clear about what has been approved, what is still being prepared and where a decision depends on another authority. We must be willing to report difficulties before a missed milestone becomes another broken promise.

The work before us

The programme before us takes us through the system baseline, the needs of each subsector, financing, accommodation, digital infrastructure and delivery capacity. Tomorrow's commissions must bring those strands together. My task this morning is to give that work political direction, not to settle every technical question in advance.

I want us to leave with a ranked programme that distinguishes immediate repairs and readiness interventions from projects that have demonstrated investment readiness. Alongside these, we need a preparation pipeline for important proposals that still require feasibility work, costing or other decisions.

The distinction matters. A proposal should not disappear because it is not yet ready. It should have a clear route through preparation. Equally, an urgent need must not be presented as an approved project before the necessary work has been done.

We must agree how these programmes become one national infrastructure plan, with a timetable for completing and validating it. That timetable must identify the decisions and approvals required, and who is responsible for securing them. The first-wave 2027 to 2030 pipeline must remain subject to proper technical validation and costing.

The commissions should set out actions for the next 30, 90 and 180 days, with named leads, dependencies and a reporting process. Where a decision lies outside this room, record the route to it. We cannot manufacture an approval by writing it into workshop minutes.

Above all, judge our priorities against the system we want to build. Will they widen access where it is most constrained? Will they improve the quality of learning and research? Will the facilities work, and can we afford to keep them working?

Infrastructure for a skills revolution means that our physical and digital investment follows a clear national ambition: a post-school system in which more people can develop their abilities and contribute to the life and development of this country.

That is the responsibility before us. Let us use this workshop to turn it into work that our institutions can carry out and our people can see.

I thank you.

#GovZAUpdates