Fees must fall turns out to be just a wish

AFTER all the hullabaloo noting the bravery of student leaders as these game-changers who could force the government to sponsor free education, the present reality does not agree.

Universities continue to demand registration and tuition fees without any compromise and are taking full advantage of the conditions allowed by the pandemic.

Restrictions have paralysed student leaders, who alongside their followers, would face an immediate arrest and jail terms, and therefore criminal records, if they dare to gather, burn and destroy private and public property, for whatever reasons.

As a matter of fact, many students face the reality of being excluded from the academic year because they just cannot pay.

The institutions are bolstering their financial coffers with threatening messages like “provisional registration” and “outstanding fees”.

There is no mercy today, when educational institutions of the government want to recoup money from poor students even during a pandemic. But when state entities lose money to corruption, recouping that money is done through hugs and kisses for the cadres involved.

The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same.

In any case, what is a “free education” on an empty stomach?

After a free education, who will pay for accommodation and books?

Somebody has to pay for what is free, somewhere and somehow.

Added to the costs for the government, is the need to buy vaccines and keep the R350 payout coming, at least, I suppose, until after an election.

Not only are educational institutions demanding payment for the so-called free education, they are binding the parents of desperate students into tight contracts and subsequent life-long debts owed to the institutions.

It makes one wonder whether the fees must fall fiasco was a real revolution. Or maybe, it was an intelligence driven exercise by the intelligent comrades, to diffuse the anger of the youth and inflate the ego of student leaders, their own members and future. If that was the case, it probably worked.

But for how long can you fool all the people all the time, even a youth whose majority is legally free to smoke a certain organism in their “unemployed and destitute” status? KHOTSO K.D MOLEKO | Mangaung