Our newsroom was quite excited with the news that Higher Education Minister, Blade Nzimande was coming to Grahamstown to address a youth leadership indaba. It is an important meeting, but we were really keen to see if the minister was going to say anything about his campaign to muzzle the media.
Our newsroom was quite excited with the news that Higher Education Minister, Blade Nzimande was coming to Grahamstown to address a youth leadership indaba. It is an important meeting, but we were really keen to see if the minister was going to say anything about his campaign to muzzle the media.
If there was any question time, our reporter would be sure to ask for Nzimande's views. We were then disappointed to learn only two days before his scheduled address, that the minister had cancelled his visit to Grahamstown “because flights were not available on the days he required”.
This is surprising for reasons that we might not be able to discuss if Nzimande has his way, but since the Media Appeals Tribunal does not yet exist and the Protection of Information Bill has not yet been passed into law, we can freely discuss Nzimande’s lame excuse.
His cancellation is surprising because it tells us that the minister’s travel department only books flights two days ahead of expected departure. In other words, the minister’s office only plans two days in advance – sort of. That might explain a few things about our R165-billion education system.
The excuse that the Minister could not get the flight he wanted is just silly. Shortly after receiving the email that said that there were no suitable flights available, we checked. There were in fact plenty of seats still available on Saturday morning that would enable Minister Nzimande to fly into Port Elizabeth and comfortably make it on time for his address.
There were seats on various flights to PE so we didn’t even bother to check the East London flights. Oops, we forgot to check if the seats were first class. Anyway, can you imagine what the chances are of an SAA bookings clerk saying to the Minister’s office, “sorry we don’t have any place for the minister”? Yeah, right – as if that's going to happen.
