Media must be objective and students work
What of the students who voted for academic activities to resume, patients who urgently had to access facilities at the Wits Medical School but were blocked, and ordinary people driving to work whose vehicles were damaged by protesters throwing stones and rocks at them, as if it is their fault that the protesters cannot pay their fees?
What about business owners whose premises have been broken into and looted? They also have every right to be heard.
My third point is the universities’ management teams’ inefficiency and inconsistency. When the violence and destruction started they brought in security companies and the police, but as soon as they started doing their job they were told they were not wanted on campus.
At UCT, protesters found guilty by the courts of gross violations were thrown in prison, only to have the university management give in and ask for their release. This is tantamount to rewarding them for their violent acts, arson, incitement and intimidation.
It is the protesters’ attitude that bothers me most. For some reason, they are convinced that somebody else is obliged to pay their university fees, whether it is their parents, the government, the private sector, the JSE or the Chamber of Mines.
They are not schoolchildren. Nobody is obliged to pay their fees. They are adults fully capable of finding part-time jobs to pay for their studies. Student debt and unaffordable university fees are not unique to South Africa. They are a part of student life. The really intelligent and talented students earn their fee-free education by achieving high enough marks to secure themselves scholarships.
This option has been available to all South African students for as long as I can remember.
Millions of students around the world resort to working two or three part-time jobs each to fund their studies. I was one. Necessity normally breeds ingenuity. If protesters can afford to fail the year by wasting time on protests, they are definitely wealthier and more privileged than they claim and the “missing middle” is only an excuse to break the law.
As a black woman, I find it deeply disturbing that protesters are using their race as an excuse for their delinquent behaviour. I grew up believing that black people are expected to fail; that they are expected to engage in criminal behaviour.
However, I was also raised to believe that I was born black to defy those expectations. By regarding the management’s handling of the protest as an attack on black students, the protesters are saying that it is okay for black students to behave like delinquents, to have low standards and resort to violence, intimidation and destruction. It is not okay.
Our job as black people is to rise far, far above that, to defy our socio-economic circumstances. It is time for the protesters to grow up, take responsibility and stop using their ethnicity or socio-economic background as an excuse.
Maria Lopez
AS A taxpayer who is subsidising the fees of students, including protesters and the militant student representative councils, I was interested in how facile and one-sided Masego Panyane’s interviews in the Saturday Star were last week. All your interviewees were allowed to sing from the same socialist hymn sheet, without any attempt to balance their biased rhetoric.
Firstly, I would have loved your docile interviewer to have asked them whether they voted for the present government in the recent elections, considering it is the government that actually controls (and misappropriates) the much-needed finance for tertiary education.
You could also have included interviews with some of the vast majority of students who voted (by a margin of 7:3) to complete the academic year, and are now being bullied and intimidated by the militant minority.
Maybe she should have interviewed students whose classes were violently disrupted and who were assaulted by thugs. She might have mentioned the increasingly common racist remarks, specifically against whites and Indians.
Also unheard were the views of the public who had their constitutional rights trampled on by a relatively small group of hooligans.
Finally, I would have liked Panyane to have included an interview with the family of Celumusa Ntuli, who was killed by rioting students when they set off fire extinguishers in an effort to intimidate students at Wits who wanted to study. I am yet to hear an apology from either the Wits SRC or the protesters for his death. Editor: Please see page 7
Mitch Launspach
HAVE the university students causing mayhem given any real thought to their future? The current intake will be scrutinised closely by companies and human resources.
No employer in their right mind will take on a known troublemaker. Some of the protesters featured in the media will find it impossible to find employment and justly so!
This is unfair to those who only wish to finish their courses. What will be the outcome if exams do not take place? Will there be no intake next year?
Tom Lambe