Major metros across SA are beginning to become student cities. Previously this concept used to be confined to small towns such as Stellenbosch, Dikeni and Makhanda, which have traditional research universities that grew to become major employers and key role players in the economies of those towns.
It’s nearly impossible to imagine Makhanda without Rhodes University, Dikeni without the University of Fort Hare and Stellenbosch without Stellies University.
But the dominance of the urban community by universities is now beginning to occur even in major South African cities. As Johannesburg, Gqeberha and East London began to experience massive deindustrialisation and job cuts among its adult youth, the attention of the population in those areas shifted to higher education opportunities.
But what many people don’t realise is that higher education enrolments in our context come with a housing responsibility. Young black people originate from the township outskirts and rural communities of our country that are located far away from the cities where these universities are.
Obviously, this is apartheid spatial planning that has continued into the democratic dispensation unchallenged and unchanged.
Black people and white people were and are still residing at arms length from each other. The city remains white while the face of the township remains black .
The building of universities inside white cities took the same pattern, disadvantaging black people and the subsequent generations of young people that are trying to enrol today.
In this regard, the need for higher education among young black people is also followed by the need for city accommodation on massive scales.
In other words, the changes in the policies of the democratic government on the funding of higher education have transformed both the demographics of universities and big cities.
Take Gqeberha, for instance, in the Eastern Cape.
The Nelson Mandela University there is facing a race against time to avail the necessary infrastructure to serve this unprecedented increase in its student population. Its biggest challenge is its history and the burden it has placed on its current reality that is mainly characterised by massive defunding of higher education in SA by the state.
The apartheid state intended to make these universities small institutions built in suburbs for the exclusive service and convenience of the white minority.
Today, Nelson Mandela University only has 4,000 beds on campus to accommodate more than 28,000 students. This means that close to 86% of the students are staying somewhere in this city, accommodated by the private property market.
Property owners have rearranged their houses for the student market. Some families have moved out of the university radius and availed their homes for a rental business.
The remaining families who did not move out of their homes are in constant conflict with the new student tenants about the noise they make on weekends. This lucrative student market has also increased the property value of these properties in these areas, making it almost impossible to buy and sell a home in the area.
Private big businesses have also come into the picture in various ways.
The Campus Key Group has constructed high-rise luxury buildings, purposely built for student accommodation, right at the centre of the student radius in Summerstrand to target high-income students.
Other big businesses have studied the market for low-income students and have converted offices, warehouses and factories on the fringes of the city to accommodate the mass market of the state-funded student population.
Local businesses have also begun to provide services and products to the student market. Students funded by National Student Financial Aid Scheme loans have their allowances deposited in cash in their bank accounts as a psychosocial technique of introducing them to the urban middle-class life of consumption and debt management.
Retailers and fast-food restaurants have student discounts and shopping malls have long queues in the afternoons and weekends.
Coffee shops are investing in Wi-Fi and movie houses are linking ticket sales to travel discounts. A student buys five movie tickets to get a cheaper flight for the winter holidays.
Nightclubs charge no entrance fees in exchange for hefty purchases of drinks and hubbly. The municipality is also beginning to think of reconfiguring public spaces for the private use of students.
The student city, like all other aspects of urban life, is being heavily commodified by the hybrid and business-orientated approach in handling studentification.
This phenomenon is occurring across all university neighbourhoods in the country – Summerstrand, Braamfontein, Hartfield, Bellville, Rondebosch and Quigney-Southernwood in East London.
Urban planning is beginning to be enlarged and reformulated by other sociological complexities of the postapartheid SA socioeconomic and cultural convolutions that confront the inequalities of urban life and higher education.
The government, universities and progressive businesses need to make epistemic, geographic and financial investments in the concept of the student city as soon as possible, before a major sociopolitical crisis emerges out of our urban communities.
• Dr Mzileni is a research associate in the faculty of humanities at Nelson Mandela University
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