Behind the #FeesMustFall protests
AN ANALYSIS of the #FeesMustFall movement by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation has found that the protests were a platform for students to unpack many issues affecting them beyond fees.
The centre released a report titled #Hashtag yesterday at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, where students who conducted research about #FeesMustFall at nine institutions across the country spoke of the experiences they had on campuses.
Marcia Vilakazi, a BA honours student at Wits, who conducted the research at Tshwane University of Technology Soshanguve campus, said the protests exposed real people’s struggles and pain.
She said struggles by students from Soshanguve could not only be reduced to #FeesMustFall, but also to students who came from impoverished families who were sent to the university to get educated and change the social standing of their families.
Vilakazi said these were students whose families thought by paying registration fee they had covered all university fees for the year. These students only receive R700 that is supposed to last them for the whole year as pocket money.
“These are students who eat pap and sugar. And you will have up to seven of them sharing a room just to survive in the institution. That’s why the protests happened.
“How do you not get angry when at 7am when you wake up you don’t know what you’re going to eat ... but you must show up, you must look good and somehow you must stay in this university environment that doesn’t seem to accept you and doesn’t feel it was made to accept you?” asked Vilakazi.
The study also uncovered that free, decolonised education in the #FeesMustFall movement is not homogeneous and means different things on different campuses as Musawenkosi Malabela, who conducted the research at University of Limpopo, found. “For students at Turfloop, decolonised education means getting a good quality education, like that taught at Wits, including improved infrastructure and quality academic staff.”
Students who were interviewed said they felt that they received inferior education at their institutions.