Calling for a CODESA of education

“I urge young university students to not lightly flirt with terms like revolution and violent uprising. A revolution can be apt only where there is no real prospect for a democratic accommodation. There is no practical justification for delusions of toying around with an armed struggle within a stable society capable of democratic correction. Students in tertiary institutions are in as good a position as any citizen to resort to electoral correction,” said Dikgang Moseneke, former Chief Justice of South Africa.

He was speaking on the topic Is the claim that university fees must fall at odds with the democratic project? at Unisa’s Founders Lecture on 27 October 2016.

According to Moseneke, the debate about fees must fall compels us to start where it should—the South African Constitution. “This is so because it is emblematic of our collective convictions on the democratic project since 1994,” he said. “The demand for free access to further education, including university and FET education, is a good one. It is legally valid. The claim has always been embedded in the objectives of our long struggle for freedom and is now rightly located within the  democratic project as represented by the collective constitutional pact and international human rights instruments our country has ratified. However, like all fundamental rights, the entitlement to access to higher education is open to a limitation, provided it is reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society based on values such as ours,” Moseneke pointed out.

Violence is wholly unacceptable and must stop immediately

While conceding the constitutional and ethical validity of the call that fees must fall, important as it is, there are a number trenchant allied issues call for attention, Moseneke believes. “The violence that has reared its head, connected to the demands that fees must fall, is wholly unacceptable and should stop immediately.It bears no justification whatsoever and in effect amounts to punishable criminal conduct.”

Putting the issue into perspective, Moseneke explained that, in truth, universities can never rightly promise universal access to education. “That is not their task. Only the state can and must do so,” he explained. “The true counter party to the claim that fees must fall is the state. Universities are the wrong target,” he added, explaining further that we cannot afford to have university resources destroyed, only to need them again later on when peace returns.

A valid point, he highlighted, is that the call for the #FeesMustFall movement at universities is often framed in absolute terms. He said that is unclear whether all fees—tuition, textbooks, internet access, boarding, lodging, transport and pocket money—must fall? “Equally, it is uncertain, whether every student, irrespective of financial need, must be fully funded by the state. There are also crucial issues of time frames of free access to tertiary education within which it must be realised. Must it be now or nothing,” he questioned.

Prospect of heightened unrest is ominous

With the state conceding in broad terms but lacking such details, he feels this will pose further challenges. “I understand the stance of the state that the nation should await the outcome of the fees commission. But students in protest will not wait. This means that the prospect of heightened unrest during registration at universities in January 2017 is real and truly ominous,” he said.

Moseneke is calling on a collective movement to set things straight. “What we need to collectively do, in my humble view, is convene a negotiating forum—a CODESA (Convention for a Democratic South Africa) of education by civil society at which leaders and representatives of students, all civil society formations and stakeholders with serious interest in the education of our youth, come together to debate the composition, process and substantive objects of the forum.”

Here he believes that the policy or legislative measures government would thereafter would be responsive to and enjoy the support of vast stakeholders in education.”After all, only government can formulate effective policy or legislative measures nd only government has the money to fund access to high education.” According to Moseneke, responsiveness and cohesion, not coercion, are what we need to resolve this matter.

Transformation cannot take place in an environment of contestation

Also adding his voice to this platform was Prof Mandla Makhanya, Principal and Vice-Chancellor, Unisa. “What is needed is an authentically African conceptualisation of higher education. Such fundamental transformation cannot take place in an environment of contestation, violence and populist rhetoric from whatever quarter, nor can it take place with the rather superficial levels of intellectual engagement that seem to prevail currently. In reality, transformation requires a depth of engagement well beyond that which we are currently experiencing,” he said. The VC believes that genuine transformation spans the theoretical, systemic, and cultural paradigms of education and society in a way that neither excludes nor demonises the so-called other on the basis of culture, language or religion.

The Founders Lecture was introduced at Unisa in 2003 and remains an unambiguous commitment to intellectual engagement that broadens our understanding and appreciation of higher education and higher education issues nationally, continentally, and globally, and that contributes meaningfully to the body of knowledge that informs and shapes higher education practice and development. The Founders Lecture is, above all, a dedicated space for intellectual enrichment—a space for sharing, learning and growing.

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