EFF students demand data, laptops
They marched to the higher education and training department (DHET).
The government should end financial exclusion of deserving students and provide them with laptops and data for e-learning, the EFF has demanded.
During a march to the higher education and training department (DHET) offices on Tuesday, to hand over a memorandum of demands, EFF student command chairperson Mandla Shikwambana said: “We have suffered a long time and no one is willing to come and respond, give direction and a way forward on how to assist students on the issues they are facing every day in their various campuses.”
Shikwambana said some students have never received their allowances and were struggling to pay rent “because management does not care about students”.
“There are students who have not registered because of the Covid-19 pandemic that interrupted everything, but no one talks about them.”
Shikwambana said students were being ignored because “they are a threat to the government and they don’t want them to get education and be like them”.
“We call for transformation of higher education language policy that will lead to the absolute removal of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction and the development of indigenous languages for academia, teaching and learning,” said Shikwambana.
“If the government wants students to be successful they should teach them in their indigenous languages.”
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Unisa student Sihle Mathibela said they gathered at DHET offices in solidarity to address issues that were never addressed before.
“Black students are struggling, this Nsfas is not working for us.
“Coronavirus is here, but we risked our lives to come here because the government does not want to provide a source of finance for disadvantaged academically deserving students,” said Mathibela.
Mathibela said that if the government did not deliver to their plea, they would be “forced to mobilise students from across the country and march to the Union Buildings because they are excluded and when they voice that out, they are suspended or expelled from the education system”.
“If we can fight together as a unit, we can press this education system to comply with our demands as much as we want to change the landscape of this system,” said Mathibela.
Myza Baloyi, a student at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), said they were not happy about the virtual graduations that took place because they believe that students deserved to celebrate their achievements in a manner that suited them, not the institution.
“We are saying students should not graduate online, they must wait for the right time when there is an opportunity for them. They deserve to have their own perspective.
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“I feel TUT is not ready to conduct online learning as it does not include the postgraduates, we want to know what will happen to them as they are not attending.”
Sicelo Gazide, who is part of the student leadership at Wits University, said their biggest issue was that while they could not study at night, they were provided with only 20 gigabytes for the night and 10 gigabytes for the day.
Gazide said the department did not understand that black students did not stay in proper houses or places where they could focus on their studies.
“For example, I stay in a shack with six other siblings and my mother. During the day I have to take care of them because I am the oldest and at night we share a room,” he said.
He could not understand why students could not be allowed to go back to residences “while grade 1 pupils can go back to school”.
“What does that mean? Are we being excluded or is it that the grade 1 learners can adhere to the rules and regulations of coronavirus and we cannot?” he told Rekord.
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