#FeesMustFall seen as elitist – study

File photo: Motshwari Mofokeng

File photo: Motshwari Mofokeng

Published Mar 9, 2017

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The #FeesMustFall protests were seen as a collective movement across higher education institutions, but, in reality, different universities have different needs.

This is one of the narratives coming from a new book on the university protests published by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation.

Called #Hashtag, the book was launched yesterday.

One of the book's researchers, Marcia Vilakazi, said that at historically black institutions such as the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), the fight for free education had been going on for years.

The protests at the institution, she said, went beyond fees and included the lack of resources and accommodation.

“At institutions like TUT, the protests cannot be reduced to just #FeesMustFall. It's about impoverished students whose parents think that after paying registration fees, they are done paying the school fees for the year,” Vilakazi said.

The book was written after interviews with students at nine institutions, including the University of Limpopo, Rhodes University and the University of the Western Cape.

Vilakazi said for students at historically black universities, the fight for fees started way before the national protests erupted on campuses in 2015.

“These students think that if they fight, someone will pay attention. For them this has never been about a hashtag, but about their future and knowing that for their parents they are their only hope of getting out of poverty,” she said.

“It's clear that the protests at TUT go beyond the #FeesMustFall movement.

“Many issues raised by the students are rooted in the history of the merger between Technikon Northern Gauteng, Technikon North-West and Technikon Pretoria in 2004.

"It's important that some of the structural inequalities between campuses are resolved to foster a long-lasting and peaceful solution at the TUT Soshanguve campus,” according to Vilakazi’s book research.

She said the 16 000 students at the Soshanguve campus had to share 58 computers.

“This means you can go through the whole academic year without ever touching a computer. How do you then learn without a computer?” she asked.

Musa Malabela, who researched the University of Limpopo, echoed Vilakazi’s thoughts and said #FeesMustFall was an elitist movement.

“Some of the questions we need to answer are why we're seeing the protests now and why is it important? We need to know why it was not captured in the past,” Malabela said.

His chapter on the University of Limpopo showed that students from historically black institutions were sceptical about #FeesMustFall.

It reads: “They saw #Fees- MustFall as an elitist event popularised by the media because historically white universities were affected, while their violent protests in the past over the same problem were not given the same publicity.”

Malabela also pointed out the differences between how management at historically black and white students dealt with protesters.

“When students at historically black institutions protested, management was quick to shut down the institution and send students back home.

"This is because they want to remind students that they are lucky to be there. They wanted students to go back to their poverty and remember that they are the only hope for their parents.

"But at historically white institutions, management cared about completing the academic year,” he said.

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