Burning issue is our heritage

SEVEN days ago the nation paused to recognise Heritage Day. The customary cultural displays and braais made the weekend that much better!

Two days before, there was a stand-off between student protesters and tear gasfiring police at the University of KwaZuluNatal.

The nationwide action has taken on a pattern of arson, with university property being targeted.

There has been the unfortunate burning of libraries that future scholars will need for reference, and buildings containing university records that former scholars always need.

This is not what we ought to be having today in democratic South Africa, where all citizens have a voice. Public investments should be geared to reverse the legacy of the past, not to repair infrastructure destroyed in protests.

There is every merit in calling for a serious look at the financing of higher education, and the #FeesMustFall campaign has brought this to the top of the national agenda.

Heritage Day happening in the midst of these painful moments brings into sharp focus the heritage value of education.

Education is a heritage in at least two ways which must be factored in the conversation that has been initiated by the student campaign.

The most visible heritage symbolism of education is in what parents say when they give all that they have to pay for the education of their children. And after the parents have long passed away, they are remembered for the sacrifices they made to afford the next generation the education heritage.

There is an even more societal sense of the heritage value of education. This is education as socialisation. It is the transmission of socio-cultural values for the young, and the accumulated volumes of life knowledge and productive skills as they are readied for their participation in society’s development.

The students have made two significant calls: fee-free university education and decolonised education. The matter must be addressed comprehensively, from preschool to university.

In a September 27 article, The wrong questions are being asked in the free higher education debate, Professor Nico Cloete of the University of the Western Cape makes the point that the financing of university education is already the subsidising of the rich. He points out that those who reach university are largely not from the poorest of the poor families.

In South Africa, each year about 1 million children start Grade 1 and 500 000 sit matric exams. Of this half, about 50 percent, get to pass matric, with only about 20 percent achieving a university entrance.

The country needs to invest effectively in the number that does get to university. And it needs to recognise the majority of the more than 75 percent of each year’s school entrants who do not make it to university come from the poorest of poor families. In this regard, poor children will lose out on the opportunity of Heritage Education – this is a heritage loss.

Another heritage loss is what happens to children whose parents send them to former Model C and private schools. To fit in and succeed, black children often have to leave their culture and language at the gate of the school.

From the viewpoint of Heritage Education we should thank the students for their campaign.

They should declare victory as their agenda is now definitely everybody’s.

There is victory even in the proposals made by the Minister of Higher Education for the 2017 financing. Blade Nzimande’s proposals may be falling short of the students’ proposals, but they do begin to address the pain of inequality so the government provides for poor families and meets the needs of the middle-class who can’t make ends meet – the missing middle.

This is a victory that the students should recognise, and they can accept the Nzimande proposals as an interim measure for the next year – the well-to-do families paying their way to the full, and no poor family has its children denied university education.

We should make every appeal for students to consider and recognise the victories already achieved. It is no mean achievement to get the highest policy-making level to seriously look at the financing of education and the other big question, the decolonising of education.

The SACC believes that the nation needs a full multisector national convention for comprehensive education – an education Codesa that leaves nothing unattended.

Malusi Mpumlwana, Bishop of Maropeng, Ethiopian Episcopal Church, is general secretary of the SACC