DA Shadow Minister of Higher Education Professor Belinda Bozzoli says although it’s a great victory for students, the question is how are universities now going to cover the shortfall that would have been covered by the fee increases.
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South African students want free university education. It was reported in the South African press that a few of the youth leaders, including the newly-elected ANC Youth League President Collen Maine, has called for Nzimande’s resignation. GDP growth will be only 1.5% this year and probably the same next year, lower than population growth.
For countries that belong to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – among them Germany, Australia, Finland, Mexico and Turkey – the proportion is 1,21%. In a spirited protest that included the popular hashtag #RhodesMustFall, an occupation of campus buildings, and even a bucket of human excrement thrown at the offending statute, black South African students signaled their frustration with the status quo of white supremacy. The deregulated corporate elite enjoys the world’s third highest profits, yet remains intent on looting the economy at a rate as fast as any.
This is the problem in South Africa: if a student’s mother is the sole breadwinner and works as a cleaner earning R3000 a month after tax, tuition fees of R40,000 a year are 100% of her annual income. Many students face difficulties. Their organizations united across the ideological spectrum, from socialist to nationalist to even the center-right student wing of the main opposition party, and hit national targets.
Since the protests started on the 14th of October, the ANC’s response has been lukewarm. The unrest provoked running battles between the police using stun grenades and protesters outside Parliament in Cape Town and in Pretoria. And with Zuma showing weakness, their demands might just be met.
REUTERS Police clash with protesting students outside Parliament in Cape Town.
That was the #RhodesMustFall movement.
One of the other demands is that universities end outsourcing.
While an increase in the payment due to universities by students may have been halted, inflation has not. Increasingly, university students have utilized violence to demonstrate their grievances when the results of peaceful protests and negotiations have been fruitless. Nene dishonestly claimed that this plus a prior tiny raise offered in February are “in line with long-term inflation”.
Racial transformation in South Africa’s universities is happening at a snail’s pace.
Whether seen through the eyes of students, workers, the poor, women and environmentalists, Nene’s budget begs for intensified social struggle.
Zuma said that while the limitation on presidential terms has been widely accepted as a general idea to introduce democracy in Africa, the extension of those terms is acceptable when done through democratic processes.
The government, which subsidizes universities, has said it can not afford the free education that students are demanding.
Despite the announcement of a moratorium on fee increases, the student protests continued on October 26. These have since come under the democratic government’s funding ambit. Free education has been presented as a goal of the ANC since it adopted the Freedom Charter in 1955. If the student movement is a fuse, this silent majority may well be the powder keg. So the march on Pretoria two days later – and threat of a full storming of Zuma’s office – must have been the decisive factor in the state’s reversal. Although the cost of a deferring a tuition increase is estimated at between $150 and $300 million, by making this concession Zuma has given encouragement to many more protests and Pretoria marches in future. It is up to students to continue to fight for free education and sacrifices must be made to achieve this. For as Nene signalled, a more damaging period of austerity looms. It has challenged the systemic inequality of South Africa and persistence of white privilege.
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“South Africa needs to find not a short-term solution, but a long-term solution to the education of its most vulnerable”, she said. The vicious policies of capitalism cause misery for both workers and working class students. Hard yes, but now, nothing seems impossible in this exceptional site of class struggle.
