Durban - The Fees Must Fall campaign that had brought tertiary education campuses to a grinding halt last year was a “political campaign funded by international forces that wanted to prove a point”.
This was the startling claim made by the eThekwini deputy mayor, Nomvuzo Shabalala, during Tuesday’s executive committee meeting.
Shabalala did not identify who or what these international forces were.
She made the comments after DA councillor Heinz de Boer had jibed that “primary school fees also needed to fall”.
De Boer made the comment after the city manager, S’bu Sithole, announced that the municipality would this year not increase rates for services provided to universities.
The decision was to help universities limit their costs in order to deal with the lack of fee increases this year.
This was after the city was approached by the Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT) in this regard.
All councillors in the committee welcomed the move.
Sithole said the decision was “part of dealing with their (universities) cost structures related to consumption of services in residences and buildings”. “It will apply to other universities, not just MUT, but it (MUT) will obviously be prioritise.”
De Boer said: “That’s perfect. A lot of this is in line with what we really want to do as a municipality, (such as) to reduce water (loss), replace light bulbs, save energy.”
He then quipped that the programme should also apply to schools and colleges that were also struggling.
“I can tell you, at university level there’s #FeesMustFall, but when you’re a parent of three children, Fees Must Fall in the primary schools as well,” he said, laughing. “We need to help the schools, too, to save money.”
Shabalala was not impressed, and called De Boer to order. “The government has invested a lot of money when it comes to education. Education is one of government’s five priorities,” she said.
“We know that the #FeesMustFall movement is not really a campaign driven by the poorest of the poor, who should be driving it. That campaign is a political campaign funded by international forces that want to prove a point that our government doesn’t deliver… our government delivers. Our children are eating in schools, there is no other country doing this. People want to do things overnight, and it can’t be like that.”
She said that councillors “should not behave like we don’t know what government is doing”.
“We must remember that we have no-fee schools. No-fee schools came as a result of the government deciding that schools are suffering and therefore we need to come to their rescue,” she said.
After a series of protests culminating at the Union Buildings in October last year, the government acceded to students’ demands and President Jacob Zuma announced that there would a moratorium on fee increases at universities this year.
The Mercury