Professor Adam Habib, vice-chancellor of Wits University and author of South Africa’s Suspended Revolution, released a statement in which he shared the outcomes of Friday’s meeting between the presidency and Universities South Africa. But it was a lost cause.
Advertisement
Since October. 14, protests have spread to the country’s university campuses and beyond in opposition to a nationwide proposal to hike up university fees by 10.5 percent and the registration fee by 6 percent.
A small group of students remains opposed to the university reopening and has condemned the SRC’s decision.
“Practically every student that is here, is a needy student from a disadvantaged background”, said Cherrel Africa, the deputy dean of the economic and management sciences faculty at UWC.
A few are attempting to divide the students who have fought this battle with great discipline and eloquence, but more importantly with one voice. Staff on campus confirmed that water shortages happen intermittently, and this in itself evokes the lack of necessary resources on campus.
“The one big issue is outsourcing and insourcing”, Habib continued. But leadership divisions among the protestors could have serious consequences if a successful outcome to the struggles were not negotiated soon, a #FeesMustFall leader warned Daily Maverick.
A more moderate contingent of students told Daily Maverick they were concerned at radical demands being made in the short term, and that they believed the initial objectives of the #FeesMustFall movement had been achieved. Rhodes Must Fall linked their campaign to the struggle for black liberation in a colonial space, not merely for the students but also for the black academic staff and the black workers and support staff on the campus. It’s so high, it’s absurd.
“When we started our #WitsFeesMustFall protest we had no idea the kind of momentum it would gain or the impact it would make not just nationally, but internationally”, the Wits SRC said in their own statement. We can not afford for 32 500 students to lose the academic year.
President Jacob Zuma agreed to provide more government funding for universities in a private meeting with student representatives and university management last Friday.
There’s no doubt that the students are justified in their demands for a free education. The racist system of government ended in 1994, but to this day many black South Africans – who comprise the majority of the population – remain economically disadvantaged.
Advertisement
It calls for free education, the cancellation of all student debt, free accommodation for students, an adequate book allowance and free high quality food in university canteens. It does not resolve the issue of unaffordable education nor does it address other important issues that the national action has been tied to like the outsourcing of labour on university campuses or the general discontents of the lack of transformation at higher education institutions in South Africa.
