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SOUTH Africa’s ruling ANC cautiously welcomed yesterday a report on university tuition fees that recommended they stay in place, but are paid back through a higher rate of tax.
The Heher commission, which wrote the report, was set up following anti-fees protests in 2015 and 2016. Those protests were tense and eventually saw violence — university buildings were set alight and one worker was killed.
The report rejected abolishing tuition fees. It supported students taking out loans from private banks, which would be guaranteed by the government.
ROGER MCKENZIE recalls the one-in-a-generation communist leader murdered at the dawn of a new South Africa 33 years ago last April 10
Cuts are sweeping campuses as cash-strapped universities slash staff and politicians fail to act on a growing funding emergency. VINCE MILLS reports
The charter emerged from a profoundly democratic process where people across South Africa answered ‘What kind of country do we want?’ — but imperial backlash and neoliberal compromise deferred its deepest transformations, argues RONNIE KASRILS
Almost half of universities face deficits, merger mania is taking hold, and massive fee hikes that will lock out working-class students are on the horizon, write RUBEN BRETT, PAUL WHITEHOUSE and DAN GRACE