Institutional racism quietly thrives at UWC

Students are seen at the entrance to the UWC campus on Thursday night on Day 2 of #UWCFeesMustFall protest.

Students are seen at the entrance to the UWC campus on Thursday night on Day 2 of #UWCFeesMustFall protest.

Published Oct 23, 2015

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The Cape Argus invited student co-editors to edit today's edition of the newspaper.

This article was written, commissioned and edited by students involved in the #FeesMustFall protest.

Cape Town - “Bring Back The Rector! Bring Back The Rector!” chanted hundreds of UWC students on Thursday afternoon as they gathered at the university student centre on Day 2 of #UWCFeesMustFall protest.

Students were demanding the return of Professor Tyrone Pretorius, who reportedly left for Joburg after shutting down the campus. Students had wanted to speak to him directly.

His absence did not dull momentum, however, as more than 300 students continued to sing and chant, and eventually “strategising a way forward”.

#UWCFeesMustFall has succeeded in uniting students from “every walk of life”.

In the highly political student culture that prevails on the campus, members of all five campus political structures – Aluta, Daso (Democratic Alliance Students’ Organisation), EFF Students’ Command, Pasma (Pan-Africanist Student Movement of Azania), and Sasco (South African Students’ Congress) – came together to lead the fight against a common enemy.

Religious organisations – such as the Student Christian Organisation and Methodist Society – were also represented, along with unaffiliated students of all races, gender, sexual orientation and physical abilities.

While it may have gone unnoticed, UWC students were not present at the parliamentary #FeesMustFall march, which took place on Day 1 (Wednesday) of #UWCFeesMustFall.

This was a deliberate and collective decision.

The university provided two buses for students to attend the march, (which in any case would not have sufficed considering the turnout).

Moreover, students wanted to be at their own institution in order to engage with management about issues that are specific to UWC.

Students did not want to grant management the opportunity to pass the buck, which they were starting to do by providing the buses in the first place.

Chief among these issues, of course, was the consistent increase in tuition and residence fees.

UWC attracts a student populous mainly comprised of blacks and coloureds from rural and township backgrounds.

Students simply cannot afford the fee increments to which they are subjected each year.

In addition, we are calling for the Student Credit Management office, which expects students to prove their poverty before every registration, to fall.

At the beginning of this year, students were required to pay 30 percent of what they owed from previous years in order to be allowed to register. Where was a poor black student supposed to source R50 000 overnight?

Students also wanted to address the institutional racism that quietly thrives at UWC.

The university capitalises on its history as a black-consciousness institution that was open and accessible to blacks and working class students “in order to gain funding and advance its enterprises”.

Yet this same university practises a culture that excludes and marginalises black and working class students.

And the institution’s use of the term “black” cleverly obscures the inequalities and tensions between coloured and African people on this campus – inequalities evidenced in the fact that not a single faculty dean, for example, is an African.

These are but some of the issues that define #UWCFeesMustFall. And we will not stop until our cries are heard.

* Thozama Mabusela is a student at UWC and is part of #UWCFeesMustFall movement.

Cape Argus

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