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A year since the #FeesMustFall protests propelled the country into a nationwide fight for free education for all, activists and academics who have been monitoring the movement have joined forces to compile a book on their collective areas of expertise.
Edited by Susan Booysen, a professor at the Wits School of Governance, the official launch of Fees Must Fall was held at the Wits School of Governance tonight.
The book was launched by Wits Press in conjunction with City Press, with a panel discussion which was opened up for critique and commentary by the audience.
The speakers included Darlene Miller, Vishwas Satgar, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh and Refiloe Lepere.
All in all, the book has 22 contributing authors, each focusing on a chapter.
In an engaging and topical debate, issues of outsourcing and feminism were brought to the forefront in relation to the formation and effects of the #FeesMustFall movement.
One critique was that the book was penned by authors who “sat in their ivory towers” while the real fight occurred on the ground. This was a comment by one of Wits’ student leaders Busisiwe Seabe.
Consensus from the panel was that student views were taken into account.
However, it was emphasised by Miller, a lecturer at Wits, that the role that contributors played in putting the book together was to amplify the national discourse surrounding the #FeesMustFall movement.
Lepere said that the movement was a catalyst for the greater discourse of the struggles that faced the majority of South African and that it wasn’t “merely about fees”.
“Protests were not just about fees but about how dignity and black life remain terrible 23 years after democracy. Problems are still faced; class struggles are intertwined,” she said.
The notion of the feasibility of free education also came up. Mpofu-Walsh said that R15 billion was what free tuition would cost, “which is a drop in the ocean”.
“Two universities for free tuition will cost four Nkandlas. It’s not just achievable but it’s not hugely expensive either,” he said.
Miller pointed out that the notion that Greek and Eurocentric knowledge, architecture, coursework, and ideas are the norm needs to be brought down.
Fees Must Fall brought about a new understanding of what leadership can be and what we can do when we come together as a collective and “is something we should be proud of”, said Lepere.
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