Fees top of student bodies' minds at summit

Representatives from the South African Students Congress, the Democratic Alliance Student Organisation, the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania and the Economic Freedom Fighters Command spoke on a range of issues, including the absence of national treasury from the summit, language barriers at universities, protests and racism. 

SASCO’s Ntuthuko Makhombothi says increasing fees does not help those from poor backgrounds.

"It means you want to exclude students. So, if you raise fees and you're saying you are raising fees because you want to get more money, you know you're not going to get that money. 

"You're only raising fees so that you lock out students and you have fewer students that you're going to be able to support and that's the problem. It works against the transformational agenda," he said. 

PASMA’s Ndiyakholwa Ngqulu says the only solution is free and quality education like in Sri Lanka, Russia and Botswana.

"How do these countries who've attained free education sustain and maintain it with the little resources they have. With the many resources South Africa has, how can we best attain our own [free education] and moreover sustain that education?" he asked. 

On student protests, the EFF SC’s Mpho Morolane says they will continue to encourage their peers until the issues are resolved.

"It cannot be correct that year in, year out we face challenges of exclusion and academic gatekeeping and we have fora such as this one but we don't go deeper into issues. If a fora such as this one cannot interrogate issues then it is our responsibility as student leaders to ensure that we take our students to the streets," he said. 

The summit, which began yesterday at the Durban International Convention Centre and was opened by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa is being attended by officials including Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande.

(File photo)