Cape Town - Student protests at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) have been called off for the year after the Student Representative Council (SRC), university management and the #FeesMustFall movement reached an agreement.
The nine-hour meeting with students and the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Tyrone Pretorius, ended just after midnight on Wednesday.
Some of the issues agreed upon was that the university would not be increasing fees next year and that it would be scrapping upfront compulsory registration fees for NSFAS, bursary and indigent students.
UWC was the scene of violent student protests last week after nationwide demonstrations for a zero percent increase in university fees for next year had subsided at major universities across the country.
It was also agreed that the university would look into the issue of outsourcing essential services.
UWC’s spokesman, Luthando Tyhalibongo, said the university had tried in-sourcing a few years ago but were forced to abort the idea.
“UWC has been through this before; in the early 2000s we had in-sourcing that led to us almost being bankrupt.”
Tyhalibongo said the university supported the call for free education and looked forward to engaging with students in a non-violent manner. “We can come together (student and management) and talk and not resort to violence.”
SRC president Akhona Landu said one of the biggest issues raised by the #FeesMustFall movement during the deliberations was the dissolution of the SRC and amnesty.
She said: “The #FeesMustFall movement brought up the issue of amnesty; amnesty for all that had transpired. It was then agreed that there would be a healing process for the whole institution so that this doesn’t turn into a blame game.”
Landu acknowledged that there had been animosity between the SRC and the #FeesMustFall movement. “Yesterday (Wednesday), we looked at the fact that we could have all presented our cases differently and the approaches taken could have been different. But we all made conscious decisions based on our interest in representing students.”
Mnqobi Ngubane, from the #FeesMustFall movement, said students welcomed the decision not to increase fees.
However, he said most students did not trust that management would comply with some of the demands that it promised it would look into.
Ngubane said management’s response to the call for students to graduate despite having outstanding debts was “lip service”.
“Students feel that management is simply making empty promises and won’t comply with the agreement.”
He said students may resume protesting or would call for an emergency council meeting, to resolve some of the demands that they felt were neglected in the meeting.
While exams are due to start on Monday, some students feel they are not ready.
Meanwhile, the university has started offering counselling sessions for students who are traumatised by the protest.
Landu said the university would be starting a “healing process” to repair broken relationships among students and management.
“Holistically as a university we will have to have a healing process whereby we can vent some things we need to vent; also to provide solutions on how best we can move forward and repair some of the relationships that might have been broken in terms of communications and achieving a common goal.”
Cape Argus