Johannesburg - The South African Communist Party has added its voice to a moratorium on fee increases for 2016, speaking out just before President Jacob Zuma said fees would not be hiked.
“It is overwhelmingly the deserving children of the workers and the poor who cannot afford the high cost of access to universities and colleges, who are being excluded on financial grounds,” it said in a statement.
It emphasised that varsity fees were not set or increased by the government.
However, it called on the government to begin a “legislative process” to review the Higher Education, Technical and Vocational Training Acts to regulate institutional autonomy and ensure more effective public accountability.
“The constitutional principle of academic freedom must not be conflated with institutional autonomy. Neither must institutional autonomy be used to lock-out the role of the state in advancing the broader public interest,” it said.
It also praised students for defending their struggle from organisations wanting to hijack their struggle for narrow party political and sectarian interests.
“Let us ensure that this major countrywide student mobilisation creates momentum for advancing towards a more egalitarian society, and does not result only in sectoral gains at the expense of the wider working class and poor,” it added.
It called on the SA Police Service to act with maximum restraint in often difficult circumstances caused by deliberate provocation by some sectors of those protesting.
It also voiced support for students’ demand for an end to outsourcing and casualisation of some university workers.
“As a country let us not ignore the broader social and economic context and its relation to the situation at hand. On the one hand a doubling of college and university student enrolments since 1994 and a massive increase of comprehensive student funding and support by the state,” it said.
“On the other hand, a persisting capitalist economic crisis and a society characterised by crisis levels of inequality, unemployment and poverty. These are structural and systemic issues, which call on our liberation alliance to move faster in advancing the second more radical phase of our democratic transformation.”
Labour Bureau