PART 1: FREE EDUCATION IS THE FUTURE – BUILD IT NOW

Events of the past weeks, (from our protests to the NSFAS review report), propel us to borrow and amend the slogan of the SACP in order to underline our own contention that the introduction of free education can no longer be postponed. The thousands of students, who responded enthusiastically to the call to protest in institutions of higher learning demanding free education, surely feel this way and have thus far shown their willingness to fight for their right. This is not in the factional sense of “people taking up arms” to defend individuals.

The free education protests also achieved something beyond just the call for free education; they fostered debate. Unbeknown to the protesters, their protests were to generate a fierce public discourse, with some wholly agreeing to the need for free education while a few “enlightened” minds argued to the contrary. The views expressed by either protagonist have been determined overwhelmingly by their class position.

Those who continue to rake millions from our country in the form of profits suffer from wilful amnesia, such that they believe that there is no connection between poverty and access to education. As such, forgetting that thousands of students continue to be locked out of the higher education system on the basis of incapacity to pay fees, and that those who survive the turbulence sprout from the middle strata of South African society. Also forgetting that lack of access to education results in poverty gaining permanency in particular households, some even posited rhetorical questions such why the call for free education now? The blindness and amnesia of the anti-free education ideologues is palpable.

While bourgeois intellectuals were attempting to dissuade society against free education, their lapdogs (the media) attempted to shift the focus from free education. Instead of reporting about the popularity of our free education protests, most media institutions chose to focus on clashes between police and students during these marches. In the same week that we were engaged in our free education protests the Sunday Times attempted to shift the focus from free education to “divisions in SASCO” that are ostensibly caused by Malema in some of our branches. This was later proven to be nothing but a fulmination of the imagination of their sources.

In the past week, the Minister of Higher Education and Training released an NSFAS review report that recommended the implementation of free education. Once more, the media kept mum about this important recommendation, until we had a press briefing celebrating a majority of the NSFAS Review Report’s recommendations. Probably, we think, the media’s sudden silence is with the hope that these NSFAS recommendations will fade into oblivion and the burden of the costs of free education would be evaded with ease by propertied stratums.

It is with this context that we have decided to open a special focus on Free Education and the NSFAS review report in particular. In the ensuing weeks, we will write a critique of the NSFAS review focus on various aspects of the NSFAS Review report. By critique we do not mean that we will be disagreeing with the report. Of course, there are areas that we disagree with on the report and we will tease out those. On the whole, the NSFAS review report is “path-breaking” and “epoch making” as described by the NEC press statement. For once, in the history of South Africa a review committee tasked by government has accepted our call for free education. Fly by night experts and intellectuals have been left with their pants down.

Unfortunately, when rays of light begin to show, it is difficult to confirm whether they are a product of our imagination or are reality. It is also difficult to tell whether this positive shift will last or disappear with the blink of an eye. Some say, the devil is in the detail. This is all because we understand that the NSFAS Review Report contains recommendations, the implementation falls squarely on the hands of the Minister, while the decision on an increase in taxation lies with the Minister of Finance who thus far has exposed his fear for domestic and international capital.

To be continued…