Free education long overdue
UNIVERSITIES countrywide are on tenterhooks following Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande’s announcement on fees increments this week.
It was always going to be a speech to either please students or fuel the tempest of discontent among them.
Nzimande achieved the latter and students seem more intent now to protest and shut down universities than they were last year.
When students took to the streets, marched to parliament and to the Union Buildings calling for free education, President Jacob Zuma calculated that a zero percent fee increase for the 2016 academic year was enough to pacify them.
Yet protests and disruptions went on as soon as the 2016 academic year began.
In the weeks leading to Nzimande’s announcement student activism and mobilisation intensified.
Students who felt aggrieved about being excluded from a process that will decide on their lives disrupted the proceedings of the fee commission that has been holding public hearings to investigate the feasibility of free higher education.
The University of KwaZulu-Natal was literally burning. Images of burned books from the university’s law library circulated, eliciting outrage over this “most deplorable” act by students.
Clearly, Nzimande thought he could, like Zuma last year, once again pacify students with his announcement of a capped fee increase that will only affect students who can afford to pay – exempting poor and missing middle students.
Disruptions at Wits University and a suspension of academic activity at various universities since the announcement means Nzimande terribly miscalculated.
How do we make sense of this state of affairs? Why is higher education finding itself in such a precarious situation?
In the broader context of governance and policy making, the rise of the #FeesMustFall movement is a consequence of indecision and poor leadership.