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The battles that are being fought by students in the #FeesMustFall protest, are actually their parents battles, and the youth shouldn’t be left to try to find a solution to this problem on their own.
These were the views of former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene, who addressed the #FeesMustFall issue during a recent gathering at the Gordon Institute of Business Science, where he was a panellist in a discussion hosted by the institute’s ethics and governance think tank.
University students have been protesting against the high fees that are charged by universities. Another round of protests was sparked on Monday, with an announcement by Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande that universities were to determine their own fee increases for next year, capped at an 8% increase.
“The battles the youth are fighting are our – their parents’ – battles.
“We invoke people like Mahatma Gandhi and the Mandelas because we are beginning to run out of role models. Young people need people to look up to. Young people need us, first to trust us with their future, and to work with them to build their future,” he said.
“I shudder to think where my daughter is when all this happens. If she does what I did – which I think at times was venturing into very dangerous territory – and I ask myself now that I’m grown up whether it was courage or stupidity ... and it was sheer stupidity because some of the things that we did was like, come what may.
“As parents, some of us have been there. We actually need to be alive to that, and make sure that we work with our young people in building the future.”
He mentioned initiatives of trying to raise funds, and spoke about an example from the Western Cape, where the university administration is working together with students and alumni to solve the problem of funding.
The way the environment is now, he said, it is easy for violent protests to flare up. But, he added, some in some instances there aren’t actually reasons for these protests.
“What has been proposed by the government is something we can work with. because we are working towards trying to a solution but it seems like some people have made a decision to oppose anything that is proposed.”
