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3 Reasons Why Students Are Fighting For Free Education #FeesMustFall
Government officials say free higher education is impossible in the short term. While they have promised to help poorest students, they have left fee increases in university hands and per student, government funding has actually gone down. So for weeks, universities across South Africa have been scenes of often-violent protests that have not only put this academic term in jeopardy, but at times spread into surrounding areas.
For more than a year across South Africa, students have been marching for free higher education — many of their parents fought Apartheid and they say this is their generation’s cause.
Mpendulo Mfeka, law student
“Only two of us at the public school I attended were able to get to Wits. It pains me that most of my high school mates, who were as good as I am couldn’t make it to Wits because of financial means. The issue of free education is not a student issue, it’s a national issue. Because we are expected to get this education and help provide bread and other necessities, people need to understand is that when someone gets financially excluded, it is not just the individual being excluded but it’s the entire family, the black community.”
Palesa Rakwena, accounting science student
I kept thinking how is my mother going to juggle a teacher’s salary with my university fees and my brother’s school fees while trying to keep the household afloat. My main reason for joining this movement was because I come from a family where I was raised by my mother most of my life, my father wasn’t around so we felt financially constrained and balancing student loans and the rest of our life becomes a big challenge.”
Odwa Mjo, international relations honors student
“If we fight for free education now we are one step closer to us benefiting from it and for the generations to come.”
