If universities gave in to the 15 demands of the South African Union of Students (SAUS), our higher education institutions would collapse overnight. Nobody pays. No registration fees. No fee increases. Abolition of all debt. Postgraduate students funded. Laptops for everyone. The full return of all students under level one lockdown. No academic exclusions. It is the sheer arrogance of these demands that will astound the taxpaying public.
None of these student leaders would try a stunt like this in their coming private or public sector jobs, for the simple reason that they would be fired on the spot before a single tyre was set alight. But universities have become the political playground for reckless politics and endless demands, regardless of affordability or anything approaching reasonableness. No doubt the tragic police shooting of Mthokozisi Ntumba during the Wits student protests opened up the political and emotional space for these extravagant demands.
As always happens, legitimate student concerns are mixed up with profligate demands. The issue of student debt is the single most important burden faced by poor students right now. If historical debt stands at R13bn as now projected, then that problem must urgently be resolved, because it blocks access to continuing studies and transfers the burden of debt intergenerationally; that is not good for the education of the youth, nor is it good for the families of students.
In fright, and with the spectre of the 2015/16 protests hanging over the heads of university leaders, all kinds of panic measures are being instituted — such as the temporary lifting of the debt exclusion provisions and the extension of registration deadlines deeper into the academic year. As if students will miraculously find monies to register from one or other source. As I have said often in media recently, this problem can only be resolved through intervention by government, through a restructuring of the national budget and through a phasing-in process over a period of at least five years. And it must be done urgently.
Behind the smoke of protests, you will also find academic failures and repeaters, student and non-student operators for their political parties, and opportunists who seize on such moments for the media spectacle that campus politics provides.
But what does the public not see in this mix of impossible demands? Notice, for example, how “suspension of academic exclusion for the 2021 academic year” slips in at number 12 in the set of demands. What does this mean? That no matter how often or how many modules or courses a student fails, he or she must be allowed to study regardless of time spent at university. Just for the record, no university in the world allows for unconditional registrations of this kind. Yet I can guarantee you that among the more vociferous students in the crowd are those who have failed year after year and are joining the bandwagon of protests for their own needs. To give in to this demand is to render the entire system of higher education unfair, because for every student that extends their stay beyond a prescribed period, another student cannot gain access. This is where the term “professional student” comes from; it describes those who do not or cannot pass their courses and so, to prevent exclusion, they take their grievances to the streets.
The excessive demands might lead the public to believe that nothing has been done to relieve the burden of studies for poor students. Not so. That is why several universities (I will not name them for fear of spooking them into action) have indicated that they are not joining the current protests. For the simple reason that they have been taken care of in the generous provisions granting free education for the poor since 2018 and where loans were converted to grants. This is also why I do not believe that the current protests will escalate to the levels of disruption we saw during the 2015/16 fees protests.
So, who are the discontented on the streets at the moment? Behind the smoke of protests, you will also find academic failures and repeaters, student and non-student operators for their political parties, and opportunists who seize on such moments for the media spectacle that campus politics provides. These chancers overshadow the legitimate cases of students for whom the debt burden stands in the way of registration despite a solid academic record; those who have been disadvantaged by the inefficiencies of the distribution mechanism for releasing NSFAS funding; and students whose family circumstances changed drastically as a result of the Covid years so that they can no longer fund their studies.
Ironically, the 11th demand is for “free quality education for the poor and the missing middle”. One thing is certain, we can bulldoze free education (whatever that means) onto university campuses, but you definitely cannot demand “quality education” in the same breath. And that is the danger that lurks behind some of these irresponsible demands.
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