Statement for immediate release on university fee increases and intervention by the Department of Higher Education and Training

20 October 2015

The South African Communist Party (SACP) welcomes the outcomes of the meeting held today between the Minister of Higher Education and Training, Comrade Blade Nzimande, and the leadership of both universities and students.

In particular, the SACP welcomes the resolution that there must be meaningful consultation in universities, as opposed to unilateralism, and that no fee increases to be agreed to by the stakeholders from these negotiations must be above inflation. The SACP views this as progress and a victory for students, and calls on all parties to negotiate in good faith.

Today’s intervention by the department must be seen as an epoch-making intervention which reaffirms the principle and superiority of public accountability as opposed to the use of institutional autonomy to oppose transformation and development. The Higher Education Act must be amended to legislate this fundamental principle in no uncertain terms.

The right to education, transformation and national development to benefit the people as a whole, the majority of whom being the working class and the poor, are far more important than the elitist claims of universities and colleges which are seeking to remain enclaves of a privileged few and thus perpetuate class inequality and domination.

The Department of Higher Education and Training which is at its formative stages has previously been taken to court by universities using their institutional autonomy as a launching pad of their attack against government intervention.

As usual, such attacks have been supported by the DA and other organisations of a racist mould which seek to preserve white privilege. It is in this context that 21 years in our democratic transition many universities, especially historically white institutions, have not fundamentally changed. This must change as part of the second, more radical phase of our democratic transition. As the SACP, we believe that the Department of Higher Education and Training is moving in the right direction.   

It is disingenuous for the so-called Democratic Alliance and its like to blame the Higher Education and Training Department for the legacy of apartheid. This is nothing but right-wing opportunism and populist electioneering.

In the same vein, the SACP condemns in strongest terms possible reactionary and divisive posturing by some individual elements within our own movement which has nothing to do with access to higher education but everything to do with attempts at factional and corporate leadership capture of the movement in future conferences to feed corrupt private interests! The African National Congress must decisively deal with factionalism in all its manifestation as resolved by the recent National General Council.

Statement issued by the SACP, 20 October 2015