By Yaseen Kippie
The Fees Must Fall Movement (FMF) has made efforts in researching potential models pursuing free education. A booklet titled ‘Protesting Policy- Interrogating Free Decolonised Higher Education Funding’ was handed out to attendees at a public meeting at UCT’s Jameson Hall last week. The meeting, presented by students and workers, demanded a more serious approach to the issues of free education as well as wage increases for workers by UCT officials.
The models provided by the FMF Movement comes in the expectation of counter-models to be presented by the South African government in order to curb the potential of protests at the end of the 2017 academic year, which according to Ihsaan Bassier, one of FMF’s leaders, will definitely happen again this year.
According to Bassier, the models the FMF Movement provides is the only way forward, and that people should not place their hopes in the false promises of the government.
The main sources of funding for free decolonised education, the booklet upholds, would come by “raising corporate and highest personal income tax rates by 2%, as well as reallocating funds from defence/economic affairs.”
The call for free decolonised education, which started in 2015 with the Rhodes Must Fall protests, was based on a myriad of frustrations, including the 31% of qualifying applicants that were denied NSFAS in 2014.
To the FMF Movement, it is a lot more than free education. “A revolution must take place in order to take education out of the hands of those who abuse it for their personal gain, especially when it oppresses the majority of people, which in our case is the blacks who have been disadvantaged for so long,” said one attendee.
Examples of other countries and the use of their GDP was also part of the discussion. South Africa spent 0.7% of GDP on higher education in South Africa compared to 4.5%, in Cuba, 1.8% in Malaysia, 1.4% in Ghana, 1.2% in India and 1% in Brazil.
Despite the meeting’s atmosphere being largely pro-FMF, there were a number of opponents who called the entire movement ‘anti-white rhetoric’.
“I would be very wary of some of these people, they are genocide-mongerers,” said one another attendee.
The Fees Must Fall campaign is divided, but efforts are still being made to further the possibility of free decolonised education. The question now is, what will this all lead to? VOC
