The Select Committee on Education, Science and Creative Industries says it will wait for President Cyril Ramaphosa to take a decision regarding the Higher Education Minister Dr Nobuhle Nkabane.

The committee was responding to the report that Nkabane had submitted to the President explaining her engagement with members of Parliament last month.

This comes after Nkabane had a confrontation with some of the MPs when she was briefing them about the appointment of the SETA board chairpersons.

Chairperson of the committee Makhi Feni says their next step will be informed by Ramaphosa’s decision.

“We will allow the President to process the report and make a decision on the matter. This will also inform us of the next step going forward.”

Meanwhile, the committee on Higher Education and Training says it wants a legal opinion from the institution before it can establish whether Minister Nkabane had misled Parliament. This is over to the remarks the Minister made last month in Parliament that the panel responsible for the appointment of the board chairpersons for SETAs was independent and beyond reproach.

Chairperson of the committee Tebogo Letsie says they first need to probe the matter before making any conclusion.

“We want consequence management for the Minister. So the committee was deliberating on whether we should activate section 70,  sub-section 2 of the Powers and Privileges Immunities Act, which speaks about consequence management should anyone who comes to parliament and misleads parliament or gives parliament inaccurate responses. We deliberated on that, and we said we will obviously ask legal to help us here. But can we say that the Minister would have misled us and or we must bring her to the committee to clarify what she said at the meeting of the 30th of April?”

 Minister of Higher Education Nobuhle Nkabane to account for her conduct in parliament