President Zuma’s grants to students will not be enough to prevent protests
11 January 2016
The grave news that protests and disruptions have started at institutions of higher learning is the inevitable result of the ANC’s skewed priorities and dithering in securing funding for poor students for this academic year.
Reports confirm disruptions today at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits), The University of Johannesburg (UJ) and the University of Pretoria (Tuks). These are no doubt the first in a series of protests which will spread across the country’s institutions of higher learning in the weeks to come.
The DA calls on the Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande, to enhance efforts to reaching a workable resolution to these protests.
In addition, the DA in Parliament will continue to support the needs of the sector and the plight of those students who cannot afford the education they have worked so hard to pursue:
The DA will, as it did in the medium term budget review period, insist that Government reprioritise funds from luxuries such as VIP protection, Ministerial cars, VIP jets, foreign diplomatic postings for Zuma acolytes and other extravagant and unnecessary expenditure to ensure the insufficient amounts promised to Higher Education by President Zuma’s government are substantially increased.
The DA will write to the President to request that he release the full report of his task team into the funding crisis as well as the details on where the money for the R4.6 billion grant will be coming from and when it will be paid.
The DA will oppose any effort to further pilfer funds from Historically Disadvantaged Institutions' (HDI) development grants and or other scholarship and apprenticeship programmes.
After 20 years of neglect of the system by Zuma’s government, the President has at last been forced to find more money for the ailing sector. However, what he has pledged from the budget will not be enough to prevent protests this year or for years to come.
This year’s moratorium on fee increases created a R2.3 billion shortfall at universities. But in fact National Treasury gave a mere R300 million to meet this shortfall and insisted that most of the money should come from Departmental funds reallocated from scholarships, apprenticeships, and grants to develop HDIs, while the balance was to be met by the cash strapped universities themselves.
In anticipation of the inevitable resumption of protests in January this year, President Zuma announced that he would be finding a further R4.6 billion: R2.6 billion to be used to cancel outstanding student debts to universities and R2 billion to top up the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) as apparently recommended by the President’s task team on the fees crisis.
But the President has, typically, failed to release either the task team’s report or details on where this money would come from and when it would be released.
Of course any money given this struggling sector is welcome. But the allocation from Zuma’s government is simply too little, too late. The government knows only too well that there is in fact a shortfall of some R51 billion in NSFAS alone over the next three years. R2 billion will meet only a small fraction of the needs of students who have the academic ability to study but who cannot afford to do so.
It must also not be forgotten that the above-inflation fee increases which ignited the 2015 protests were caused directly by government’s failure to provide sufficient subsidies to universities over the past 20 years. In fact subsidies over this period declined in real terms. There is no reason to believe this problem will go away. But the President has made no mention of additional funding to prevent the need for further fee increases in 2016/17.
The Vice-Chancellors of all 26 South African universities made a joint appeal to the President yesterday, requesting him to ensure they receive much needed subsidy increases. The DA has estimated that subsidies to higher education institutions need to rise from R26.2 billion to approximately R31.3 billion in this financial year alone to prevent the need for further above-inflation fee increases. Should President Zuma continue to ignore this urgent need, 2016/7 will see further high fee increases, no doubt sparking further and more furious protests.
The President’s actions during the #FeesMustFall protests come across mainly as self-preservation. He continues to show disdain for the “clever blacks” in higher education. These efforts to protect himself will not be enough.
Issued by Prof Belinda Bozzoli MP, DA Shadow Minister of Higher Education and Training, 11 January 2016
