Students threaten to occupy Pmb legislature
The Conversation Africa asked Suellen Shay to unpack the minister of education’s announcement that universities should individually determine fee increases, and the likely student response
STUDENT leaders at UKZN Pietermaritzburg campus have threatened to occupy the provincial legislature unless their demands are met.
“We are not writing any more love letters to the government,” Xola Mehlomakhulu of the university’s EFF student command shouted outside the provincial parliament yesterday.
“We are not writing any more love letters to our vice-chancellor either,” he said.
Hundreds of students from the Pietermaritzburg campus marched to the legislature yesterday, demanding free higher education.
This after the Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande, announced on Monday that fee increases for next year would be at the discretion of individual universities.
He recommended capping increases at 8% and said the government would subsidise the increases for poor students and the “missing middle” at institutions which kept to his recommendation.
Yesterday’s march started at the university’s main campus just after 10am and students reached the legislature just before midday.
There they handed over a memorandum of understanding rejecting the minister’s announcement.
Mehlomakhulu, along with the president of the Pietermaritzburg Students’ Representative Council, Siphelele Nguse, and Bonginkosi Khanyile – also of the EFF student command – climbed atop a police Nyala to address students before the memorandum was handed over.Their message was clear.
“This is a warning,” Khanyile said. “When we come back, we are going inside.” He gestured to the legislature.
“Last year we handed over a memorandum,” he said. “The year before last we handed over a memorandum. This year we are handing over a memorandum again. This is the last time.
“Next time, we are going to occupy”.
As for the minister’s announcement that government would next year subsidise the increase for some students, one student yesterday said this was not enough.
“As the missing middle, we still cannot afford university,” she said.
UKZN’s council has welcomed Nzimande’s announcement. “In particular, the decision ‘to support children of all poor, working and middle-class families – those with a household income of up to R600 000 per annum’, as it is an element that is in synergy with the ethos of UKZN,” university spokesman Lesiba Seshoka said yesterday, referring to the gap funding grant the minister made mention of.
“In addition, the notion that ‘all NSFAS (National Student Financial Aid Scheme) qualifying students, as well as the so-called missing middle will experience no fee increase for 2017’ is a welcome development for our university,” Seshoka went on.
Classes resumed at UKZN yesterday but student leaders said they would not be returning to class and Nguse said this was “futile” for students who could not afford university.
Seshoka, however, said the academic programme was proceeding with no reports of disruptions on the Westville, Howard College, Edgewood or Medical School campuses.
Wits University students yesterday hurled large stones and were engaged in running battles with the police and private security guards.
Thirty-one students were arrested and detained by police for blocking the entrances and exits into the university. They were later released with a warning.
The University of Cape Town announced that it had suspended its academic programme yesterday and today due to protest action. Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth urged staff and students to stay off campus.
MINISTER of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande, has announced it is up to the country’s universities to “individually… determine the level of (fee) increase that their institutions require…”.
But he cautioned that no university’s fees should be raised by more than 8% for 2017. This follows a blanket freeze on fees in 2016 that left a number of universities on the verge of financial collapse.
Q: Is the minister’s decision good news or bad for South Africa’s universities?
A:
Overall it’s good news – or it should be. It’s good news from universities’ point of view. The 8% figure comes from a recommendation by the Council on Higher Education. Now universities will have to make the final choice about their increases.
It’s also a pro-poor policy. The minister confirmed that students who benefit from the National Student Aid Financial Scheme (NSFAS) will not pay increased fees in 2017.
The good news is that he added a second category of students who will not be required to pay increased fees next year: the missing middle.
These are students whose parents earn too much money to qualify for loans from NSFAS but too little to actually afford university fees. Money will now be found to ensure that this group doesn’t pay increased fees in 2017.
I think it was a measured statement. The minister could have made a purely political announcement – one that would have been closer to the ANC’s recent support for 0% increase for the second consecutive year.
All of that said, the announcement hasn’t been good news to a very significant proportion of the student population.
Mass meetings were being held at various campuses after the minister’s press conference so students could discuss their responses and plan their next moves. UCT suspended all academic activities in anticipation of the announcement.
I don’t actually think it would have mattered what the minister said. There is such a groundswell of unhappiness among students. It started long before last year’s #FeesMustFall movement and goes back to the #RhodesMustFall protests that saw a statue of Cecil John Rhodes removed from UCT’s campus. There are all these issues, of inequality, of decolonisation.
A significant proportion of the “born free” generation – those who were born in or after 1994 – have had it. They’re fed up on all fronts.
The state, university management: we’ve left too many things for too long. It’s viewed as us doing too little, too late. Now we have a crisis.
The focus in the next few days will be less on making fee-related decisions or discussing the minister’s announcement.
Universities will be focusing on security, on keeping campuses open or shutting them down amid safety concerns. There’s no head space to tackle students’ underlying deep-seated anger and frustration. We’ll be trying to figure out the cost of security per day instead of having bigger discussions.
Q: What will it take to create the space for those discussions and for taking decisions?
A:
We’re in a very tough space to be finding an action plan. If you go back to the beginning of 2015, when students first started protesting, there was an opportunity to stand back and ask big questions; to set up ideological discussions. Now we’re fighting fires around a group of students who are saying ‘You wouldn’t talk or listen to us a year ago, so now we’re not interested.’
We need a wider conversation so that we can find each other. At UCT, for instance, there’s been a call for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission mediated by people from outside the institution, giving students a chance to air their grievances and share their experiences.
University councils will now have to figure out how high or low they set their fee increases.
Q: When do you think that will start happening?
Never mind deciding what we do with the money, the questions right now are: “Are we open or closed tomorrow? How do we ensure everyone’s safety if we reopen or remain open? Should we be closing with exams coming up?”
I think what we’ll see is local issues – those unique to individual universities – connecting with the national issue of funding. Those will all feed into a bigger channel. What that looks like, we don’t know.