This is one of the major problems described by the Institute for Race Relations (IRR) in its latest policy report entitled ‘Fees can fall – but first”.
The IRR says what has been described as a ‘white’ or Western curriculum at South Africa’s universities has come in for criticism – “silly as it is, given that knowledge is universal and does not have a race, and, in addition, that there is consensus on the importance of developing a rich African academic tradition.
The report says the second problem with the #feesmustfall movement is that violence has become a defining feature of the movement. “On campuses, thugs, sometimes wearing balaclavas, have walked into lecture theatres and offices and physically assaulted students and staff. Weapons have been smuggled onto campuses, including petrol bombs that have been used to set buildings alight.”
The report mentions an incident in which a student was hit with a sjambok in a law lecture. Other students were assaulted in a dining room. Women have been sexually harassed and intimidated. Calls have been made to attack the police. Private security offcers and police offcers have been attacked and seriously injured. A warning went out at Wits that the killing of a white student would get the authorities’ attention.
According to the report only when law and order has be re-established and universities are functioning in a stable manner it will become possible to address the question of access to higher education for poor students.
The report says: “A suggestion repeatedly made by protesters and others has been that “rich” parents, and/or households that earn over R600 000 per annum, pay more. This is not only discriminatory, but also impossible to determine. No account is taken, for instance, of how many people – including children, or disabled or elderly parents – in the household in question need support. This is not a call for the government to make. Equally, unlike school children who are minors and whose parents are obliged to support them, university students are majors and society cannot expect or demand that their parents support them fnancially at university.
“Some students have proposed a wealth tax (“Free Education is a possibility”, City Press, 2 October 2016). However South Africa’s tax-to-GDP take is already very high. They also give no consideration as to why taxes should go to their education rather than a host of other competing and, arguably, more compelling causes.”
Despite this, the IRR suggest only the following could be done to provide for “debt free” – rather than “free” – tertiary education:
1. Work towards scrapping the current NSFAS scheme and replacing it with a new scheme funded through cuts in the civil-service wage bill and subsidies to state-owned and other companies. It would have to be administered with the sort of effciency one associates with the South African Revenue Service (SARS);
2. The fund will make fnancing available to students who qualify for tertiary study against a more
demanding set of qualifying criteria than those presently employed;
3. Funded students should repay these grants though a unique income tax number that will see them paying slightly higher levels of income tax until the value of the debt is paid off.
This approach will resolve the immediate funding shortfall facing universities, provide a sustainable long-term funding model, reduce wastage through underprepared students entering universities but not completing their degrees, and avoid lumbering new graduates with high levels of debt.
The IRR, however says, legacy is to blame for the current crises. “Apartheid’s appalling legacy, exacerbated by poor and corrupt governance, is manifest in every sphere of society today and the failing responses to this legacy have endowed us with the nihilism of the #FeesMustFall (FMF) campaign. The costs are amplifed by a profoundly mistaken assumption that when the youth make a demand they can pursue it with impunity… Apologetic parenting, especially since the 1980s, has impelled generations of upper-class parents to retreat to the false refuge of guilt and indulgence.
This has become increasingly true of less well-off parents (who can ill afford it) whose indulgence is coupled with fear of the contempt of their better-educated children. “
But, says the IRR, university management structures can restore public confidence in higher learning institutions if they commit to the following five principles of action:
1. They must bring appropriate numbers of police and security offcers onto campuses and keep them there even in the face of public criticism;
2. They must not negotiate on (let alone accede to) demands they cannot meet. Universities can consult over the demands and what they can, if anything, do about them – for example to take the demands to the appropriate government department. But if they cannot meet the demand then they must not agree to meet it. Related to this point is, obviously, that they must not to enter into negotiations with amorphous groups of students who hold no elected or otherwise demonstrable mandate;
3. They must not capitulate to threats and intimidation, or offer amnesties and the like to violent students, in the hope of achieving peace. Indulging and appeasing violent behaviour is likely only to encourage more violence, is disrespectful to the vast majority of students and staff, and risks denuding the university management of any future authority. Lecturers and students alike have complained that they are afraid.
Some have described being locked in offces and lecture rooms as marauding thugs walked the
corridors. Others have spoken of being locked in their dorm rooms, too afraid to come out;
4. They must use interdicts as an entirely legitimate, non-violent response to criminal action that has threatened lives and property, and
5. They must hold disciplinary hearings that accord with university procedure against any student or staff member whose behaviour has breached a university’s disciplinary policy.
