There seems to be no end in sight for the culture of demand and violent protest with the ongoing protest by Wits students over fees.
This time the students are demanding that the university allow those owing R150,000 or less be allowed to register for the 2023 academic year. They also demand that NSFAS students in off-campus accommodation not be required to pay a deposit.
The students last week took their demonstration to the house of vice-chancellor Zeblon Vilakazi, seeking him to address them on their demands. In the process, they also threatened to burn down his house. The university condemned the actions of the students calling them unacceptable.
The protests have become a perennial affair since the advent of the so-called #FeesMustFall campaign, which have gained in notoriety as an orgy of destruction of university property, intimidation, hooliganism and anarchy.
To date, the student protests have wrought damage to property estimated in excess of a staggering R150million to our universities. It is mind-numbing to think university students, who should know better, can engage in such dastardly actions. It is inconceivable that these are the same people who in a few years will be expected to take the reins from the current leadership and govern the country. Lord, have mercy!
As for the protest itself, a lot of confusion has been sowed with the movement starting out with a demand for a moratorium on fee increases in 2016. Following a violence-plagued campaign, the state caved in and acceded to the “students” demands by declaring that there would be zero fee increases for 2016.
Emboldened by their victories, the initial demand was then graduated to a demand for free education, cancellation of debt and an end to financial exclusions and workers’ outsourcing. The year started out with the movement stating their intended aim of shutting down universities and thus disrupting the registration process.
The demand for free education has undergone a few somersaults that it becomes necessary to attempt to place a clearer perspective on the matter. Section 29(1)(b) of the South African Constitution states that EVERYONE (my emphasis) has the right to further education, which the state, through reasonable measures , must make progressively available and accessible.
For its part, the ruling party’s guiding document, the “Freedom Charter” also states that “The Doors of Learning and Culture be opened” and further that “Higher education and technical training shall be opened to ALL (my emphasis again) by means of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit.”
The two documents are unequivocal about the role of the state in the provision of higher education in particular.
The demand for free higher education is obviously unreasonable and unsustainable as it does not take into consideration that finances have to come from somewhere for universities to stay operational and that the state does not possess unlimited financial resources to fund universities 100% as it were. Probably cowing to the intimidation tactics of the hooligans, the government made a few hasty and not so well-thought out concessions.
With the current shaky condition of the economy, it is clear the government was not in a position to grant the zero-increase concession, let alone free education.
Currently there is talk about the struggle for free education “for the poor”. The Wits SRC statement added weight to this historical distortion by asserting that “we will exhaust all avenues in order to open the doors of higher learning to the poor. As to when this amendment to the Constitution and the Freedom Charter came into being, this is a subject of guess work.
Such a categorisation is highly problematic as it seeks to compartmentalise society into economic blocs in contravention of the Constitution, which states that everyone, not the poor or any other bloc, has the right to further education.
Equally, the Freedom Charter does not make any distinctions from the populace as it states without equivocation that higher education and technical training shall be open to all, not some or the poor for that matter. It therefore stands to reason that free education for the poor is a non-starter. It further boggles the mind that almost three decades after democracy we still refer to the poor in such patronising terms as if one of the key goals of the liberation struggle was not the complete eradication of poverty.
We cannot at this juncture be seeking to glorify poverty as much as we cannot seek to equalise it. Poverty is a social ill that cries out for a government that takes the interests of the people as their own, to obliterate.
The argument for charity for the poor is evidently fallible and condescending as it seeks to stress differences in an effort to explain inequality and thus absolve the government from the responsibility to correct socio-economic aberrations.
Some sophists will even go to the extent of quoting the Bible and argue that Jesus himself had said, “You have the poor with you always” (John 12:8).
It is only through the strengthening of the economy that we can advance the cause of free education, including higher education for ALL in South Africa, and not some nebulous poor. Is the current ANC government up to this noble mission? I beg to differ.
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