JOHANNESBURG – The South African Students Congress (Sasco) is very angry at the manner in which tertiary intuitions – in collusion with the National Student Financial Aid Scheme – are blocking access for children of workers and the poor of this land.
It stated that from January 6 this year their members throughout the country in both universities and FET colleges, returned to campuses to begin the work of the Right To Learn Campaign.
According to its national president, Mr Ntuthuko Makhombothi, “Sasco has from its inception believed that education is a right for all humanity and therefore central to its programme is the struggle for universal access to education.
The theme for our Right To Learn Campaign this year is, ‘Broadening access to tertiary education and training, making Sasco the first friend on campus’.
“The main objectives of our RTLC is to ensure access for the working class and poor, fight financial and academic exclusions, as well as simplify registration experience for all students in our institutions of higher learning and training,” he stated.
Makhombothi further said the 2014 academic year had seen a far bigger application of students wanting access to higher education and further education and training as a result of the improved matric pass rate.
He said most of them had applied in time into our universities and colleges, and there was a considerable number of students who did not apply on time, and are doing their level best to access the system.
“Unfortunately, universities such as the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) and the University of Johannesburg and many others, have introduced a new policy of no-walk in for applicants in the 2014 academic year and only allowed students to apply online on programmes that still had space open, which was an exclusion of a special type, since the majority of the poor and working class children might not have access to such a system, let alone understand it.
“This has resulted into the majority of those filling the space been children of the middle class and the rich, who can simply access the system from the comfort of their homes and posses the required ICT skill to make use of the online registrations methods.”
The department of higher education and training has introduced a Central Application Clearing House (CACH), which is the method of checking available space in various institutions and making applications on behalf of students. The limitation of this programme is that it is not well understood and its marketing is generally poor and start late in the year.
“We have met the department on two occasions to try deal with such limitations, and engaged on measures to improve on marketing and communication of the CACH system, part of the engagements we had with the minister was our demand for more funding of poor students to access our universities and colleges, the fact that NSFAS has been unable to cover the majority of university students as it does with FETs, is worrying, we will continue our efforts’ in calling and fighting for more funding for the poor till free education is realised, and we have dealt with the demon of financial exclusions in higher education and training,” he said.
He said the financial scheme continued to cater for only a few students and excluded a majority of those who were poor, even if they met the academical requirements and being financially needy.
Even though there has been significant increase of the budget of NSFAS, this has been met with ever increasing fees and a growing demand for funding.
“NSFAS has failed to pay many universities their full allocation for 2013 and therefore we have a crisis of many NSFAS students have outstanding fees and being unable to register for 2014.
Even though these students meet the requirements for funding and are academically deserving, they are financially excluded. In other institutions NSFAS has made a commitment to pay or pay a portion of the historic debt, but universities are refusing to register these students.
“NSFAS allocation for 2014 has not increased and as such many deserving returning and first-year students are unable to register. Many who qualified for funding have been refused by universities due to insufficient funding.
This has resulted in the disenfranchisement of the working class and poor students and their condemnation to unemployment and poverty.This also comes against the significant increase in bachelor passes by the matric 2013 class, particularly because a significant number of these students who performed well are from disadvantaged schools.
We are also concerned that universities are refusing students to register through NSFAS, which is against the national policy framework of the scheme.This we view as a deliberate act to exclude poor black students from higher education.
We are more concerned that some universities like the University of Johannesburg have billions in reserves yet they exclude academically deserving student and fold their arms, shifting the blame on NSFAS.
“Sasco is particularly angered by FET college administrators refusing students to register through the zero-fee registration policy of NSFAS. This goes against the advances being made to provide 100% bursaries for deserving FET students.
We warn colleges to desist from this and to follow the national policy and not act like islands within a single training system. We are also concerned with the capping of NSFAS by FETs which results in the reduction of students who benefit. We are aware of some of the corrupt practices at our FETs in the allocation of the scheme and call on our structures to be vigilant and expose those elements,” he added.
In this instance, he said Sasco would like to take this opportunity to encourage students to embark on mass action in order to ensure that their demands are met.
“This is not a time to lock ourselves in boardrooms and have permanent meetings that do not resolve the plight of our students. We encourage those institutions that are already on strike such as Durban University of Technology (DUT), Vaal University of Technology (VUT), Cape Penninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and
Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT) to continue with their mass action and further accelerate these strikes so that they are felt by the echelons of power in our universities and in the Department of Higher Education and Training.
We have noted the various cases of victimisation against student leaders for fighting against the exclusion of poor students as a result of the poor and unguided funding of NSFAS.
This has strengthened our resolve to call for the dismissal of the vice-chancellor of the University of Limpopo, professor Mogalong, who continues to victimise Sasco activists in a bid to kill the political culture and student activism on campus.
“We are worried that the likes of VUT are also following this dangerous approach and urge universities to work with student leaders to resolve the challenges in our institutions,” he said.
He added that many other institutions were facing problems and conditions dictate that went on strike this week. These include the University of Johannesburg (UJ), University of Limpopo, University of Zululand (Unizulu), University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (UKZN), Walter Sisulu University (WSU), Tshwane University of Technology (TUT)and University of Fort Hare (UFH).
“This does not mean that there are no challenges in various other institutions that we have not mentioned. It is very shocking and extremely disturbing that the institutions that are seriously confronted with these problems are the previously black institutions where children of the workers and the poor study.
It is therefore an attack on the poor and it ought to be responded to with serious mass action.
“In the principle of unity and the reality that these challenges confront all of us in universities and colleges; Sasco is engaged in preparations for a general student strike in the entire tertiary landscape on NSFAS and other issues of access to universities and colleges.
In as much as we would still want to meet with the CEO of NSFAS, we believe that our structures had enough meetings with him, which in most, if not all, cases have not bore any results.
“The general student strike will happen at all university and college campuses, but will also be coupled with a number of protests to the Department of Higher Education and Training in Pretoria and the NSFAS Offices in Cape Town.
We are hoping though that the problems of access to our institutions will be resolved before we get to this point.
“We call on government to urgently increase the NSFAS allocation to deal with this deepening crisis and to save the children of the working class and poor from exclusion.
Sasco also makes a call to all our universities to exercise restraint and not exclude deserving students at the slightness provocation,” ended Makhombothi.
