Student body calls on IMF to stop meddling in SA’s higher education policy

THE SA Students’ Congress (Sasco) has called on the government to reject concerns by the International Monetary Fund around the provision of free higher education.

This comes after the IMF’s senior resident representative to South Africa, Montfort Mlachila, warned against the country’s massive spend at tertiary level while the country was experiencing growth challenges.

Mlachila said the government should instead invest more in basic education as university students could afford to pay back their education loans later when they secure jobs.

Sasco called for the IMF not to be allowed to meddle in South Africa’s “progressive socio-economic policies”.

Sasco president Avela Mjajubana said the lending institution’s view of South Africa’s education policy was appalling as it was aimed at maintaining the blockage of the majority from accessing higher education.

“We are, however, not surprised about the views of the IMF. The IMF directly bankrolled South Africa’s apartheid regime, and as such, the views of the IMF affirm the Western supremacist, imperialist, neo-liberal agenda and the continued onslaught on the development of Africa and its people,” Mjajubana said.

Mjajubana said the free education

policy, which was declared late last year by former president Jacob Zuma, was aimed at reversing the legacy of the past which saw the black majority being deliberately locked out of quality education.

“These views seek to delay the progress South Africa has since made under the government of the people in fulfilling its mandate to open the doors of learning and grant access to higher education to the black African child. These backward views seek to create institutions of higher learning that are to serve as ivory towers for the elite and the privileged South Africans,” Mjajubana said.

South Africa’s biggest public sector union, Nehawu, has also condemned

the IMF for its views on the country’s policy direction.

Nehawu general secretary Zola Saphetha said that despite the student uprisings since 2015 in higher education, budgetary allocations to universities had remained stagnant, while demands for access increased as more poor students qualified.

“We believe that the IMF has no expertise to make comments on education and other social services, and this is reflected in its track record in Africa, as well as recently in Greece. It must stay out of the South African democratic policymaking process,” Saphetha said.

This comes as IMF managing director Christine Lagarde visited the

country this week. She met President Cyril Ramaphosa and SA Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago, as well as Treasury officials.

According to the Presidency, the discussions centred around recent economic developments in the country.

The EFF called on the government to reject advice from the institution, saying it was partly responsible for economic models that devastated poor nations.

“The IMF’s economic logic wherever it intervenes seeks to create business conditions for the greedy, rapacious and callous multinational corporations whose interests will never coincide with the interests of ordinary people,” the party said.