Fair compromise

WE AGREE with Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande in his assessment that university students have shifted the goalposts.

Nzimande has made the best of a difficult situation. The compromise he has arrived at makes sense, given the fact that, as things stand, free education is not yet government policy.

What the state does, and has done for the last few years, has been to step into the gap to help poorer students.

Granted that the definition of middle class is highly contested, the amount, R600 000 a year set as a benchmark for who qualifies for state assistance, is very generous in a country where the vast majority do not earn even 10% of this amount, if they earn anything at all.

The new deal means that most of the students who say their parents are too poor to afford fees will now be taken care of.

If there is any category of people who might feel reason to complain, it is those who are considered “wealthy” because they or their families earn more than R600 000.

As the ministers says, the students are now waging a war for students whose families do not need state assistance and never claimed to.

To say that “we are all poor” as some students say, is also patently untrue.

Students, of all people, should know that South Africa is one of the most unequal societies on the planet.

This well-documented gap between the rich and the poor means that there are some who will easily and readily pay varsity fees and some who cannot.

It now seems that the students were bent on their actions regardless of what the minister announced.

It is also important that students realise that the state is always juggling competing needs. Unlike students, the state cannot afford to carry on as if it is a single-issue lobby group.

We urge students to rethink their rejection of the minister’s proposal.

Their future hinges on them learning that they will not always get what they want, even deserve.

Such is life.