The problems we facing today with our current education system are not by mistake, during apartheid, the Bantu education system was set up and the so-called black pupil had to digest inferior education because of his skin pigmentation while the white child enjoyed the best that education could offer. Today education is still structured along class lines and the continued consequences of apartheid dispossession along racial lines. The knot between race and class defines the quality of our education. Both education departments, Basic and Higher Education, can be used as examples in this particular matter.
Under the capitalist society we live in, the current education system plays a role of reproducing class structure in society. It is there to ensure that the so-called middle class remains and does not even eventually eliminate the classism that exists within our societies. If someone comes from a poor black family that is still burdened by the legacy of apartheid, that particular individual is expected to go to a school with few resources and it will be hard for him to get a good quality education. This means that later on in life he will get a working-class job and be frustrated with his basic wage. However if you come from a wealthy family you can go to schools that gives you the best this education system has to offer. Meaning later on in life you more prone to landing into a better job than the child coming from a poor family and inferior education standard. This reinforces class and racial oppression. Free qualitative education for all can change this.
One thing that should be made clear is that, students are neither rich not poor, as they are not financially independent. Students rely on their parents whom (in most cases) are financially independent even though some maybe locked in chains of debt due to the low wage that some of our black parents earn. When we say we rally behind free education for the poor it means that we are now perpetuating classism among students.
I believe that this matter has been window dressed by the government for far too long. The government has been vocal on millions of rands it has funded to NSFAS as extra funding and how there are numerous scholarships and bursaries that students can apply for in the same way that the Freedom Charter proposes for Higher Education.
The Freedom Charter, which was adapted at the Congress of the People in Kliptown in 1955 states that:
The aim of education shall be to teach the youth to love their people and their culture, to honour human brotherhood, liberty and peace;
Education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children;
Higher education and technical training shall be opened to all by means of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit;
NSFAS, scholarships and bursaries should and can never be compared to free education. Those funding models only cover a certain group of students depending on their academic output and not just any Tom, Dick and Harry. In most cases a student is required to have aggregate of 65% and above, in order to qualify for a bursary and the requirements for scholarships are even higher and are given to the "cream of the crop". Therefore these can never be used as a solution to free education as it does not benefit the whole but a minority.
I fail to comprehend how a debt sentence which is the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) can ever be counted as a solution to free education when it is still colonizing our black brothers and sisters upon entering the working-class.
The only solution to this is free education. Once free education has been implemented, there won't be any discussions on financial exclusions, registration fees, fee increments and scraping of historical debt.
It is no secret that majority of people's mind, particularly the black child, as a result of the current status quo of our education system, is still colonized.
Many black people (including myself) feel that the current education system is exclusive to the black child and is inclusive of the white child. Under the current education system learners and students are taught to be workers and not innovators. The education system is flawed in a way that even racism is institutionalized. We are taught black is ugly, inferior, dirty, evil, darkness and valueless then after all of that education we African people are then called blacks. Automatically putting a stain on our minds that we are evil and dirty. On the other hand, we are taught white is peace, beautiful, superior and everything that reigns supreme and after all of that the European decedents are called white people.
With the current status quo within the education system, there is an investment in the teachings of European history alongside the Russians so-called heroes such as Hilter, yet there is no investment in the teachings about Steve Biko, Oliver Tambo, Robert Sobukwe, Christ Hani, Thomas Sankara, Frantz Fanon, Patrice Lumumba, Anton Lembede, Marcus Garvey, Muamar Gaddaffi, Julius Nyerere, Samora Mitchel, Malcom X, Stokley Carmichael, Frederick Douglass, Edward W. Blyden, Booker T. Washington, Chika Onyeani and Kwame Nkrumah to name few. These are OUR African heroes whom in some instances paid the highest price for the liberation (of not only our country but our continent) which was death.
When this country saw a change of governance in 1994, no change occurred within the education department but just a transition of power.
22 years after democracy was achieved, students have not called for an investment in African history. They want an investment on the true teachings of who we are as Africans and not what the colonizers wrote for us and wanted us to know. There is no way a man who first met you 1652 can write history about you. What does he know about you? Further more, there is no way a man who used education to oppress you, can just hand it over to you on a silver platter.
Students believe that the first step to decolonisation is the decolonisation of our education system in South Africa. This is where the discussions of an Afrocentric education system falls in place. It seeks to sweep away all the colonial nonsense that is still dominating in our lives and seeks to keep us oppressed and appendages to white capitalist society in the 21st Centenary.
Moving over to the fallacy that our country cannot afford free education.
This year we have seen the ruling party being exposed over a number of corruption activities including the Nkandla saga which draw attention from all corners of this world to the latest State Capture Report by the out-gone Public Protector.
This year (2016):
R246 million was wasted on Nkandla.
R1.37 billion went down the drain on Post Office
VIP jets for the executive members of the state cost R2 billion
The state had to bail SAA with R6.5 billion
R10 billion is wasted on E-tolls
The biggest one of all is the proposed nuclear deal which will leave our country with a R1.2 trillion debt (this is above the debt the country inherited from the apartheid regime)
Further money was lost on the president this year (2016):
R2.1 million was spent in defending the president in court against his many cases including the Spy Tapes
R950 million on foreign missions
R2.9 million on websites upgrades and designs
R18.5 million on travel and outreach
R11 million on VIP protection
R95.9 million on lease of aircrafts
R10 million on motor vehicles
And that's not even the last of it.
Imagine the number of graduates that could be funded by the above billions of rands if it where to be invested in education.
I must say that where there is political will, money can be found. Take for example the financing of hosting the 2010 World Cup. The government had no problem financing stadiums and other infrastructure that are nothing more than just white elephants.
Students have always been vocal that in the first instance money for free education can be obtained by taxing the rich. Basically the possessed should pay for the dispossessed. According to Dominic Brown, in his article Digging in: Financing Higher Education, he states that it is a complete myth that the middle class and rich are over taxed. Since 1996 when the neoliberal GEAR macroeconomic policy was implemented government set a conservative ceiling of tax to GDP of 25%, whereas this easily be lifted to 33% as in the case in many so-called developing countries. This alone could liberate billions of additional funding to meet the demands for financing free higher education.
The largest domestic savings pool in the country is the R1.8 trillion Public Investment Corporation (PIC), owned by the government. A prescribed asset of 10% dedicated to government projects such as free education would release R180 billion per annum.
A mere 10% tax on the Idle corporate bank deposits - corporate bank deposits presently not reinvested - will free another R150 billion per annum.
A tiny tax on the financial speculation of 0.25% alone can release R75 billion per annum and would have the additional merit of slowing down the speculative frenzy that destabilizers our economy.
Furthermore, from recent reports released by the United Nation Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), indicates that billions of dollars leave South Africa illegally every year due to the accountancy tricks of commodity exports. From the UNCTAD study, platinum and silver were under invoiced by $2.3 billion between 2006 and 2014 and in fact, a further $2.3 billion between 2000-2005.
Under-invoicing within South Africa's gold sector is even more staggering. Total mis-invoicing of gold exports to South Africa's leading trading partners was $113.6 billion over the 15 year period- the UNCTAD report characterizes this as nothing less than gold smuggling.
At an average exchange rate over this period of R9 per dollar this corresponds to over R1 trillion. R1 trillion pays for free tertiary education for at least the next generation. By stopping just the smuggling by people seen as the 'great and good' amongst us, free education becomes entirely affordable.
All this money can and should be used to finance tertiary education as well as for the development needs of society.
Students find it rather difficult to believe, that a free education system promise was made but no measures were actually put in place on how to actually achieve it.
Students are tired of suggesting methods on how the government can achieve a no fee paying education system when the government prefers to act deaf.
We call upon the government to stop taking a liberal approach to this matter and implement and what promised to students and what was adapted at the ANC's 2013 congress.
It is not correct that the words which were once said against the oppressive state in the 70's can still be echoed in a post-apartheid state which is "They never taught us education, they trained us how to get it. They taught us how to be employees. It is all a caucus of being employed by someone else."
The late former president of the Republic of South Africa,
Dr Nelson R. Mandela, once said education
is the most powerful weapon one can use to change the world. How are we
expected to change the world when we are being deprived of that same education?
I do not understand how the youth is expected to change the world if they are constantly deprived of their right to education due to their economic status.
I unconditionally reject the colony and I unconditionally support the call of a Free Qualitative Decolonised Afrocentric Education system in South Africa.
A luta continua!!!
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