Johannesburg - The Chamber of Mines will review and respond to the memorandum of concern it received from the #FeesMustFall students, Senior Chamber of Mines Executive Vusi Mabena said.
This comes after the students staged a protest to the chamber in demand of free education.
“The Chamber of Mines shares the concerns of students and the wider community about the future of tertiary education in South Africa. The Chamber urges students and the authorities to do all they can to ensure the rapid normalisation of campuses across the country, and to secure and protect the resources of all institutions of higher learning,” the Chamber said in a statement.
“As the largest private sector funder of training and development, the mining industry recognises that there is a role to play for the private sector. The Chamber views education as absolutely key to South Africa’s future, not only to grow the mining industry, but also to enhance opportunities for the citizens of the country.”
On Wednesday, students from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) marched to the offices of the Chamber of Mines of South Africa in Johannesburg as part of their #FeesMustFall campaign. It is the second week of university students protests across the country.
The Chamber said that it invested more than R5 billion in skills development and education projects including supporting some 6,000 students in tertiary institutions in 2015. Over the past five years, Chamber members have supported around 12,500 students by providing bursaries at a number of tertiary institutions, it said.
The Chamber said this was in addition to scholarships for the children of their own employees ranging from primary school to tertiary education. During the same period 5 500 students and graduates participated in mining industry workplace experience programmes and were provided with internships in workplaces.
Chamber said in total 18,000 students have been supported over a five year period at a cost of more than R1,5 billion. Further, more than R180 million has been spent over five years supporting the salaries of lecturers in Mining Engineering related faculties at Universities and without those funds, many lecturing positions would not exist.
“This contribution is being made in the context of an increasingly tough time for the mining industry. In 2015, the South African mining industry was the only loss-making sector in the economy, making an accumulative loss of R37 billion,” the Chamber said.
Students have been protesting since Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande’s announcement on Monday last week that state universities could decide fees hikes for next year on their own provided they did not exceed eight percent.
Nzimande later said poor students and those with a household income of less than R600,000 a year would not be affected by the 2017 fee hike.
Titled “Save Our Universities”, the memorandum highlights issues such as how the mining industry was the backbone of South Africa’s economy and the role it should be playing to ensure that the higher education system does not collapse.
“We call upon the Chamber of Mines to save our universities through increasing its contributions to the skills development levy, which has sat at one percent for the past 14 years,” read the memo in part.
“We call upon the Chamber to lobby government it increase its share of the contribution to the running of our universities to 50 percent of the cost. Infrastructure investment in higher education sector also needs to be increased.”
Last week, Wits students marched to Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) headquarters, Cosatu House, to lobby the federation to support their struggle for free education.
Protesting students said the #FeesMustFall movement was not just a “student issue”, but “a broad working-class issue” since it was their parents who struggled to pay university fees.
Wits remained closed.
African News Agency