YCLSA supports the intentions of the Higher Education Bill in pursuit of transformation and is disgusted by the DA's continued protection of white privilege

The Young Communist League of South Africa [uFasimba] is utterly disgusted by the continued promotion of white privilege by the "Democratic Alliance".

The DA is hell-bent on conserving white privilege especially in institutions of higher learning, in particular, universities. Most of the universities in the country are lily white in terms of their academic staff profile and control. They have been resisting transformation. Which is why, 21 years after the dawn of our democratic transition in 1994, historically white universities have still not transformed.  Little progress, if any at all, has been made. 

Transformation has been moving at snail pace because organisations like the DA and DA-aligned academics such as Belinda Bozzoli, who was based at Wits University before taking her full-time bench in Parliament as DA MP, are advocates of white privilege. The least they want is the status quo to remain.‎ In the extreme; they want our country to go back.

They are the conservatives of the apartheid status quo masquerading as liberals; they are liberals only in so far as ‎they want to lock out the democratically elected government from becoming involved in the economy and from playing meaningful transformational and developmental role. This is also racist, in so far as our democratically elected government is viewed as a black government.

Part of what sparked the #FeesMustFall campaign was the exorbitant fees that are charged by universities. The universities use institutional autonomy to come up with ridiculous fees that are meant to ensure exclusion of black students and those from working class background. The same institutional autonomy is used by universities to block transformation.

The DA wants institutional autonomy to remain in force in its current problematic form and will go out of their way to ensure that white domination remains the order of the day in institution of higher learning. ‎While they block transformation in universities, they are quick to become the first to blame the government for the problems caused by autonomously made university decisions and policies.  

The cabinet has approved the Higher Education Amendment Bill by the Minister of Higher Education and Training who is concerned by the slow pace of transformation at universities and decisions that exclude the children of the workers and the poor from access and thwart their potential for success. 

The DA has not won national elections. It cannot tell the ANC which has won elections what to do. ‎That the DA has called on the Minister to withdraw the Bill is an illusion of their exaggerated powers obtained from losing elections. South Africa is a democracy and cannot be governed by a party that has lost elections and by the dictatorship of that party.

The draft Bill will ensure that government is afforded space to instil a transformation agenda in universities - and the YCLSA supports its intention. Without the Bill the government will continue to be a spectator in the transformation of institutions of higher learning and yet be blamed for the problem of lack of transformation in these institutions and the decisions they make under the guise of autonomy.

Society at large must rise up and expose the anti-transformation tendencies and push for an agenda that will ensure inclusivity in institutions of higher learning and in our communities as well. Young people must reject the existence of ivory tower universities that are mainly reserved for those who can afford.

The doors of learning must be widely opened for all and we need a collective effort to combat the exclusionary tendency that is being advocated for by the DA and its cronies in cahoots with intransigent university managements.

Issued by YCLSA National Spokesperson Khaya Xaba, 9 November 2015