The disputes are so ugly in Universities because the problems are so intractable

08 March 2016

Note to Editors: The following speech was delivered by DA Shadow Minister of Higher Education and Training, Prof Belinda Bozzoli MP, during the debate about racial tensions on campuses in Parliament today. 

Individual and group expressions of racial and other forms of hatred are repellent, and must be condemned. But they are symptoms of other things, rather than causes in themselves. In the case of ongoing conflict in universities we need to ask: symptomatic of what?

The answer is this:  Not only is our society in a terrible economic state, with over 8 million unemployed, 16 million living on state grants and a 1% growth rate; not only is our State in the process of decay and half-captured by an emerging dictatorship, but on top of that, our universities are paying the price for 20 years of financial neglect by government.  

Of all the many indicators proving this, the most important is this: while government repeatedly congratulates itself that student numbers have more than doubled in the past twenty years from 400,000 to over 1 million, the real amount Universities have received from the state per student head has dramatically fallen by 25%, from R20,000 per annum to R15,000. 

We have steadily spent less every year on the costs of teaching our students and providing them with the learning materials and environments they need. 

Universities have had to find the missing funds elsewhere. Some have obtained grants from foundations and other private sources. But this does not pay for core costs. And will private funders give money to places where buildings are being burnt and faeces thrown? Others have little chance of raising substantial private money. Either way, increasing fees has been the only option. 

At the same time the majority of the 600,000 new students entering the system have come from poor backgrounds, victims of the economic disaster which is the ANC government in the 21st century. NSFAS has proved unequal to the task of supporting them. 

So the unstoppable force of increasing numbers of poor students has met the immovable object of the costs of running proper Universities.  

Unsurprisingly, as a result, our universities have been subjected massive, unremitting protests across every province. There has been violence, arson, vandalism, bullying, the prevention of learning and probably many other things we don’t yet know about.

All our latent fears and historical resentments come to the fore when our world is threatened. It is not unexpected that out of this cauldron racial hatred has emerged. 

What did the ANC think would happen?  That the 600,000 new students would find money from a magical place somewhere, like the President has done to build his house? That the Universities would miraculously be able to run their campuses on ever shrinking budgets and keep their fees low?  It is outrageous that the current scenario of virtual campus war appears not to have occurred to government, in spite of warnings from numerous sources. 

These protests have two distinct roots: there are the middle class students of all races, who have inexplicably decided to adopt US style postmodern identity politics. “Rhodes must fall” is the epitome of this. Then there are those who pretend to represent the poor, black students, but instead of doing so have hijacked legitimate bread and butter issues such as fees, bursaries, accommodation, admissions and exclusions, for their own self-interest in an astonishingly irresponsible display of political opportunism.

In both cases, students have remained in thrall to their own universe, seemingly oblivious of the drama playing itself out around them as our governing party decays, dictatorship threatens, and our economy slumps.

The emergence of #Feesmustfall towards the end of last year did see these two classes of students unite, and there was a sudden, if brief, turning against the state. The pseudo-revolutionary, Minister Nzimande, found himself on the wrong side of the barricades, while our President had suddenly to take notice of these so-called “clever blacks”- as he had called them in the past.

Once the state was attacked, we saw action. Emergency funding was found; a Commission of Enquiry was set up; and our dictatorial President, flying in the face of all the principles of university autonomy, declared that there would be no fee increases this year. 

This flurry of decisions saved the government from being seen as the enemy. But it hasn’t solved a single long-term problem. Since January, all student protests have again been directed inwards. But Universities and NSFAS remain unable to pay their costs. 

And as happens when communities turn in on themselves, the battles have become uglier with time, because the wider situation renders them intractable. Our beleaguered Vice Chancellors have been humiliated and abused. Racial invective and ethnic hatred bubbles up together with the impulses to burn and destroy.  

The ANC breathes a sigh of relief as it no longer bears the brunt of all this. Their appeasement strategy has worked - for now. They are able to stoke up race issues on the one hand, and adopt the mantle of finger-wagging peacemakers on the other. But the price of appeasement is always high. We will be paying that price later this year and during the course of next year when the emergency money runs out. 

And what of the Universities themselves? These are precious institutions that every generation has the responsibility to care for, so that the next generation may benefit. Very little care seems to be coming from rogue student groups, who are in the minority and usually bypass democratically elected student structures.

These groups remain so wrapped up in their own narcissistic or self-interested worlds that they do not even realize that their actions undermine rather than improve accessibility to universities for the poor South African student. Government too are part of the problem rather than the solution, distracted by the President’s wilfulness, on the one hand, and its finger in the dyke of youth rebellion and lumpen-proletarian uprisings on the other. Instead universities have become the playthings of special interests and political opportunists. 

In one of its short-term attempts to address the crisis, Government yesterday announced a new body to regulate University fee increases. This is excellent news for students. But is there a similar body to ensure subsidies improve? Because if fees cannot increase, subsidies must increase. 

Or does the government visualise a lowering of salaries, a decrease of staff per student head, a degrading of buildings, residences, libraries, classrooms and labs, and a lessening of student funding?  

Universities need to be recapitalised on a large scale, or the tortured agonies of economic, racial and language disputes will worsen, violence will continue and bitterness will prevail. 

Issued by the DA, 8 March 2016