Bursary fund now broke
AFTER the #FeesMustFall protest of 2015 some students were looking to the President Jacob Zuma Foundation for assistance and bursaries. So it was very sad and distressing to read a report over the weekend that the bursary fund has now run out and has gone broke .
Hundreds of students are now struggling to finish their studies while thousands more are still waiting in vain for the “fees to fall”.
A few days ago Barack Obama, in opposition to US President Donald Trump, tweeted some inspirational sayings of Nelson Mandela’s and, in the process, garnered a record number of more than 5 million “likes” on Twitter.
Mandela inspired the world then and he still inspires the world now.
Not too long ago in 2016, Bill Gates visited South Africa for the Mandela Day commemoration and gave the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture on July 17 at Pretoria University.
This is part of what he said: “It is important to recall Nelson Mandela’s legacy and I’m grateful for the opportunity to do so. But Mandela was concerned about the future. He believed people could make the future better than the past. And so that is what I want to focus on for the remainder of my talk.”
Just over a week ago, Gates donated another staggering amount of money to charity, in excess of R60 billion to a mystery recipient.
In the meantime, Mandela’s legacy the children and students of South Africa and Africa are trying very hard to educate themselves and to make the future better but, sadly, they have nowhere and no one to turn to for assistance. They are desperately crying out for help and for monetary assistance.
It must be remembered that besides catering for our students, our universities are also catering for lots of other students from different parts of Africa.
We know the Bill and Melinda Gates and the Warren Buffets of this world love to put their money where their mouths are, hence the Gates’s latest generous donation. So we have to earnestly appeal to the world’s biggest donors and remind them of our students’ plight and ask them to come to the party.
We also have to remind them of certain indirect promises they made to Mandela.
Just Imagine what we can do with only 1% or 2 % of R60bn, which equates to about R600 million or R1 200m respectively. It will go a long way in alleviating the plight of our students.