Vol. 79/No. 41      November 16, 2015

The protests began at the University of Witwatersrand, known as Wits, in Johannesburg Oct. 14 after the administration announced a 10.5 percent rate hike. Students boycotted classes and blocked entrances to the campus. The “Fees Must Fall” movement then spread to more than a dozen public universities around the country.

In a futile attempt to break the movement, university officials at Wits cut off Internet access and locked classrooms so that students couldn’t set up their own sessions during the protests.

Police fired tear gas and stun grenades at hundreds of students who demonstrated outside the parliament in Cape Town Oct. 21. Two days later, as the movement continued to gain momentum and some 10,000 students protested in Pretoria, South African President Jacob Zuma announced there would be no increase for a year.

“It’s a victory, in that we brought the university administration and the government to their knees. It shows the power we have,” Shaeera Kalla, outgoing president of the Student Representative Council at Wits, told the Militant by phone Oct. 30. “Our bigger goal is to get free education. But there is a lack of political will to even provide free education for the poorest people in our country.”

The protests are a reflection of both what was achieved with the overthrow and dismantling of the white supremacist system of apartheid in 1994 and the crisis of capitalism today. In 1990 blacks were more than 80 percent of the population, but only 32 percent of university and technical students were black. By 2011 the figure had risen to 78 percent.

“Wits was a historically white university,” Kalla said. “Now it’s 75 percent black. But even with no tuition increase, many still can’t afford it.”

Tuition at public universities ranges from $2,400 to $3,500 a year. Unemployment is officially more than 25 percent and almost half the population earns less than $60 a month.

“We never thought there could be a national shutdown,” Inga Mbewana, a 19-year-old law student at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, said by phone. “This was the largest student strike since apartheid.”

Mbewana is a member of the Economic Freedom Fighters Student Command, which opposes the ruling African National Congress. “This fight brought students together with different political ideologies, but we can have a common goal as students,” she said, noting that the protests included both supporters and opponents of the ANC, as well as black and white students. “At first not many white students took part. But then they joined us, there was diversity.”

Along with the fight against the tuition hikes, the students called for an end to outsourcing the jobs of university workers. At the University of Cape Town the administration agreed to hire the workers directly and the demand is still being negotiated at others.

“It’s not about outsourcing, it’s about them having benefits like any other staff member of the institution,” Mbewana said. “There are workers who have been here 30 years and they can’t afford to educate their children. We cannot keep quiet.”

Kalla is a member of Progressive Youth Alliance, a coalition that includes the African National Congress Youth League and the Young Communist League. She supports the ANC.

“No other political party promised free education,” she said. “But we’re not going to keep our loyalty if they don’t start delivering. Young people are getting frustrated but they are reclaiming their space. This is an interesting time for the future of South Africa.”  
 
 
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