Skip to main content

Fees must fall - my posts

So students are calling for free education for ALL! hayi guys, i don't agree with the "all" part. How do you treat a black child form the rural areas, who has nothing to their name, the same way as a white student from Summerstand. Free Education is meant to redress and try equalise access to these institutions of higher learning for the poor majority and previously disadvantaged. Now rich and poor, in education must be equal? Free Education must be for those who can not afford it, why privilege those who are already privileged? 
There are to many ideas and lack of cohesiveness amongst student leaders. There needs to be one voice, echoing in all their voices...




I worry about this call for free education, by a divided student body, who seem to have divided ideas on how to achieve this free education. Each corner seems to be fighting to be the dominant leader in the movement (FMF). So as I watch these student leaders in the forefront and speaking to media, making sure they are in all the pictures. I worry about the voices and consciousness of those they are leading and fighting for. Students are not clear on what is happening and what it is they are shutting the universities for, but because they are told (not consulted) that it's a shutdown, they have to OBEY.

 Now in this fees must fall movement, why don't we have these student unions and leaders (who are academics) forming their own commission of inquiries, or are they leaving it up to the team of Derrick Swartz to give them a report of findings, which are favorable to the state? further how many of these passionate leaders and activist have said "for my Masters or PH.D. Research I want to find a solution or counter the motion of free education." Another question student leaders have failed to ask in last years announcement of 0% fee increment, was " what's the catch?" "Who will suffer from this decision?" Looking at 2017 and beyond, many of these future students who they are fighting for at nmmu, will not be able to access these universities. So the universities could potentially save millions from these fees must fall resolutions. The rise of the APS score, will secure space for the rich and the middle class, and only those few black learners who were able to make it, even through the difficulties, will benefit from fees must fall. Understand protest and mass action does not scare our government. But leaders need to start thinking like intellectuals and back up with research and academic responses when dealing with academy. You can not beat the mind and knowledge, with song and burnt rubber. Free education will be granted to the students, but those who need it will not be able to access it, so I think before mass action and protests happen, there needs to be proper analysis of all consequences. We must not be reactionary as student leaders, rather be as calculated as the institutions. 
  



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Balck Woman in Corporate

 While we fight for equal pay amongst women and men, we need to separate the category of women; there are black women, then there are white women. Within these categories, there are clear wage gaps and clear value of the one, over the other, with the other being black women. I have come to realise that white people do not realise their privilege and supremacy complex, there fake fading smiles when you walk past them, almost to say, “What are you doing in my space”. I don’t think they realise  that we can see right through those half baked smiles. There coldness and uninviting energy makes you self-aware and reminds you, that you are in the wrong place, this is not your space and as long as you can remember that, you will be okay. However white people are not the only problem black women face in corporate, black men also contribute to the demise of black women in the workplace. I worked for a company that was ran by black men and fell victim to the corporate abuse that b...

Dear Beautiful coconut black girl

It took time for us to realize that there was power in our skin colour, we grew up in towns and went to schools that did not value our skin tone or our languages. We grew up trying to emulate whiteness because our teachers and white schoolmates respected us more when we sounded like them and acted like they did. There was a desire to be like they are, to live like they did, our parents seemed to smile more when we spoke “perfect” English, their kids were like the white kids, they too could be at the same level as the white parents, sit in the same room at prize giving and have pictures of their kids in a classroom full of white kids and a white teacher. What was better than your child being like a white child? We are models of our parent’s dreams, we are the example of “freedom” for them. We too did not understand the enormous responsibility that was handed to us. This responsibility to prove that we have defeated the system, that the ANC government led by the former late ...

She Is My Mother

4:00 am every morning she is up, she leaves the house at 5:00 am to open up shop at 6:00 am, when everyone else wakes up or when they leave the house. She has to make sure she is there early for those who too are early, she needs to make sure all her products are on display for the morning crowd. I wake at 6:00 am like the rest of the working class; I get ready for school, prepare my books and make porridge. I make my way out of the two-room tin house I share with my mother and two of my sisters. They too get ready the same time,  my sister and I  walk to the bus stop and make our way to Bryanston to school, while the other makes her way to Lonehill. Alex seems like a faraway reality from our school lives. We might not have much at home but no one knows it here, I have a new blazer and shoes, my old ones were getting smaller, I gave them to my sister. They were still in good condition, we have to make sure they are, we don’t know when we will afford to buy them again. M...