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While #FeesMustFall unfolded, I reminisced about that fateful Wednesday of June 16 1976 as some members of our society were spouting negative comments about the class of 2015’s protests against the never-ending increases to tuition fees.
Similarities between the classes of 1976 and 2015 are in abundance. One that ranks supreme in my mind is that we proved that where unity of purpose among students prevailed, no mountain was too big to surmount.
Whereas our immediate goal in 1976 was to see the demise of apartheid’s Bantu education, our primary objective was to bring the whole apartheid regime down.
The class of 2015’s initial protest against universities’ fee hikes was not too dissimilar from what we fought against in 1976 – but its ultimate goal was to realise free education for all, as enshrined in our Constitution.
The arduous task of dismantling the apartheid Bantu education system came at a great price for the class of 1976.
At the behest of the apartheid government, a black student was only meant to feed on the rotten Bantu education system, which served solely to domesticate him. Quality, white education also succeeded in brainwashing the whites to believe they were superior to their black counterparts.
As the Soweto class of 1976, we could no longer endure the pain of being fed an education system that trampled on our fundamental rights. We sacrificed our futures to preserve the dignity of our younger siblings in the lower classes.
This deficit created by the apartheid government’s intransigent behaviour towards black schooling remains engraved in the class of 1976’s collective mind. Free education for our younger siblings was going to be entrenched in the new democratic South Africa, which we knew would happen in our lifetime.
And, indeed, when uhuru dawned in South Africa, access to equal quality education was included as an essential cog in our democratic Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
Never in my wildest imagination did I foresee that the class of 2015 would, similarly to the class of 1976, have to fight for its right to be educated without needing to worry about where the money to fund its education would come from.
The class of 2015 protesting against the fee increments at universities left me stunned and deeply pained.
With the advent of our democracy, I thought all of us South Africans would work with the necessary speed to ensure that the sacrifice made by the class of 1976 would serve as a reminder that students’ patience is never endless.
I am delighted, however, that common sense ultimately prevailed, and that the students are now sitting and writing exams. Hopefully, stakeholders in the education sector will start the process of attending swiftly to the problems that sparked this unfortunate impasse.
With the 2016 academic year looming, students have to be assured that their problems will be attended to promptly. Failure to address their challenges might result in pushing students back to the streets again.
For us to move South Africa forward, we need energetic, highly educated young people. Students thus have to be freed from practices that may end up thwarting us from achieving this objective. We are not immune from the global economic downturn affecting just about every effort to stimulate our economy optimally.
Wasting a day out of classrooms or lecture halls will further deepen all endeavours of creating a suitably conducive environment where windows of job opportunity present themselves.
We now know that students’ gripes, if left unattended for too long, can easily lead to a few unintended consequences. Unlike the class of 1976, which obtained tertiary qualifications far later than the period it had planned for, the class of 2015 at least has the opportunity to complete its studies during the 2015 academic calendar.
Muofhe is a product of the class of 1976 and a special adviser to Public Service and Administration Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi
