Cape town - Recent student protests were never about the fees, University of the Free State rector and vice-chancellor Jonathan Jansen has said.
Jansen, speaking at the Cape Town Club on Thursday, said people should pay attention to, among other things, that at the core of the student protests were genuine progressive concerns about inequality and a lack of transformation and access to tertiary education.
Last month, students at universities across the country took to the streets, protesting against a proposed fee increase.
Protesters stormed the parliamentary precinct and demanded answers from Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande.
After nearly two weeks of protests, President Jacob Zuma announced that there would be a zero-percent increase in fees next year.
While the starting point of the protests seemed to be centred on fee increases, Jansen noted that the starting point of the protests differed at each institution.
“When you talk about the old English universities like UCT and Wits University, then you are talking about a very deep set of concerns about transformation.
“At the historically Afrikaans universities it is a completely different set of problems. Places like Stellenbosch still struggle with what I call the first order of business when it comes to transformation like getting black African students through the gates into undergraduate programmes.”
He added that people had to make peace with the fact that the majority of undergraduate students will be “black African” students.
He said at the historically black universities “the issues are not statues and have nothing to do with language”, but about basic survival.
“That set of issues drives the protests that you see every year at places like the Tshwane University of Technology and places like Durban University of Technology and the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
“Their issues are completely different. It is money and it is about registration fees. When the #FeesMustFall movement came along, they found all three types together.”
He said students were protesting about more than statues and fees, but against the structure of our society.
“As long as you have a Bishop Lavis within a short driving distance to a Bishopscourt, this country will continue to have young people, black and white, raising their concerns in the way that they have.”
Jansen said the reason they marched to Parliament and the ANC headquarters was because they knew that is where the problems lie.
“Next year is going to be much worse than 2015. I can assure you of that and I am not looking forward to that.”
He suggested three options to address the issue and said solid leadership was what was needed to get out of the problem.
“We got the wake-up call and now it will take extraordinary leadership from all around to get out of this mess.”
Cape Argus