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To begin with, I would like to state my unremitting support for the cause for a free tertiary education in our life time. I think it is long overdue, for two reasons. First, I believe that the original demands laid out by students, namely, that all further increases to tuition fees be halted indefinitely, is insufficient. Where they stand at the moment, even without any increases, university tuition fees are largely out of the reach of poor or lower-income and even some middle-class families of all races, without government assistance. It is time to lift that burden off of parents altogether. If a student studies hard, and earns a shot at a university education, their family’s place on the income ladder shouldn’t play a role in determining whether they get that opportunity.
Second, by all indications, tuition-free higher education would be good for the economy. Admittedly, I am not aware of any study along this line regarding South Africa specifically. But, where studies have been conducted, such as in the US, for every dollar invested in higher education by the government, a return of between $4-7 in tax revenue, was found to have accrued to the government. Moreover, there is also the fact that families will get to spend a much larger share of their income in the everyday economy of South Africa if they were spared the burden of tuition fees. Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman has argued that this can serve as a way to stimulate an economy.
Now, what is my memo to the student protest leaders of the #FeeMustFall movement? I caution them: “be more careful and creative how you frame your demands”.
To be sure, being simple has its advantages for a movement such as the #FeesMustFall movement. Simplicity is required if a movement’s message is to be assessable to the masses. It is pertinent to articulate demands in common-sense terms, such that the common person can understand and sympathize with them. Mass support, of the sort required to create and sustain a movement, may and often does depend on this.
But to be simple is not to completely jettison nuance. The consequences of jettisoning nuance may include, among other things, the complete corruption of the original goal of the movement.
For example, it is common knowledge that among the key short-term goals of the #FeesMustFall student movement is a 0% increment in tuition fees for 2017 (and, I hope, beyond). In the way this demand is stated, and in the actions often taken to pass the message across, the #FeesMustFall movement has been vehement and insistent on its unwillingness to compromise with this demand (and I do not believe it should compromise).
However, framing their demands in such uncompromising and stand-offish manner makes it difficult, especially in terms of the political visuals, to accept anything other than an explicit concession by the government in exactly and explicitly those very terms in which the demands are made. In order words, framing the demands in this way makes it politically unpalatable for the leaders of the #FeesMustFall movement to accept anything other than an explicit statement of 0% increment in tuition from government.
This allows us to make sense of the reaction to Higher Education MEC Blade Nzimande’s announcement that the government will allow universities to increase tuition by no more than 8%. On its face, this is a loss for the movement, hence we can make sense of statements by the deputy president of WITS University SRC, Motheo Brody, that “Nzimande’s suggestion is not acceptable,” and Sunshine Myende, the deputy president of UKZN SRC, that “from the beginning of our protests, we were clear that we do not want any increase. The fee increment is our main issue.”
However, if one reads the fine-prints of Nzimande’s announcement, one is apt to find that the students have effectively achieved their goal. In the fine-print of the new policy, Nzimande pledged to increase allocations for government bursaries such as NSFRS, as well as make funds available to help students from “the missing middle,” such that they would effectively be no tuition increases for students from both groups.
My assessment is that students continue to protest probably because leaders of #FeeMustFall movement cannot be seen as accepting a compromise, or in effect, an apparent compromise, when in fact they would not be compromising at all. Being seen as compromising on the movements demands can incur significant political costs at SRC elections. But this only looks like a compromise precisely because of the way the demands were articulated. Hence I suggest that demands for the movement be more carefully and creatively crafted. To be too stand-offish, even in the statement of demands, is to severely limit what can be accepted as a solution to the problems the movement has set out to tackle.
Meanwhile, the consequence of this situation is that, with continuing protests all over the country, the #FeesMustFall now seems to be protesting to spare well-off parents from increments in tuition, since they are the only ones any increases in Nzimande’s announcement actually applies to. This, as I said earlier, entails in effect, a co-opting, albeit a seemingly unconscious one, of a protest movement supposedly aimed at fighting for access to tertiary education for the poor and disadvantaged, toward the ends of the wealthy few. A more carefully and creatively stated set of demands might have avoided this.
Johnbosco Nwogbo is a graduate Student of Philosophy at the University Fort Hare, East London.
