According to the report on the second National Stakeholder Summit on Transformation in Higher Education (DHET, 2016) widened access to higher education has resulted in an increased number of low-income students gaining access to institutions of higher learning. Since 1994, the number of university entrants has gone up, with headcount enrolments doubled from 495 356
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in 1994 to 1.1 million in 2016; with 975 837 enrolments in public higher education institutions (HEIs) and 167 408 in private HEIs (DHET, 2018). The majority of students enrolled in public HEIs in 2016 were black (71.9% or 701 482), followed by white (15.6% or 152 489), coloured (6.3% or 61 963) and Indian/Asian (5.2% or 50 450) students. In relation to gender, 114 942 more female students were enrolled compared to male African students. Lower gender differences are recorded for Indian/Asian, coloured and white students (DHET, 2018).
Access has also been increased through the establishment of new universities in Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape, and the DHET is expanding the number of places available in Further Education and Training (FET) and TVET colleges. The White Paper on Post-School School Education and Training (PSET) has also proposed that contact institutions with capacity increase enrolments through distance education (DHET, 2013). Moreover, the announcement of free higher education for first-time entry students who come from households that earn less than ZAR 350 000 annually, will also increase access for many.
However, black students continue to be under-represented in relation to the overall South African population, that is, black students make up 71.9% of the student population in public HEIs, even though black South Africans comprise 80.8% of the population, while white South Africans comprise 8% of the population, and 15.6% of the student population.
Also, access for black students at formerly white universities can be uneven, for example Stellenbosch University (SU) has a higher number of white students than black students.
Access to universities also remains out of reach for many academically qualifying black youth, partly because affordability problems remain rife (DHET, 2015a, 2015b). These factors can result in university-ready youth contributing to the 3.2 million young people aged 15–24 years who are not in employment, education or training (NEET) (DHET, 2017). Those who do manage to put together funds for registration and tuition fees, often cannot keep up with the costs for every semester, and can be forced out of universities as a result. So, even if access may initially be attained, it remains slippery for low-income students; their financial circumstances are not conducive to acquiring secure access. Consider the grim circumstances reported in the Mail and Guardian by Abdulla and Wazar (2017), told by students who are aware of the evasive nature of the access they have/had:
I am currently facing several problems. First is that I can’t get my National Student Financial Aid Scheme [NSFAS] application results because I wrote supplementary exams this January and February and my examination results are not out. Without NSFAS confirmation, I can’t register and my residence space will be given to someone else. My registration costs are ZAR 9 633, my tuition for 2017 is ZAR 38 700 and ZAR 50 500 is for residence. I came back to Grahamstown to prepare for my exams and to sort out my fees. I have been sleeping in different places, sometimes with friends and most of the time in the computer lab and showering at the gym. (Makungu Mabunda, third year BSc student at Rhodes University)
Makungu’s situation is not unique, and it illustrates how points of financial access (outstanding tuition fees) work alongside points of academic access (not being allowed to register in the new academic year) as a structural arrangement that limits and complicates inclusion. Here, inclusion is complicated because Makungu’s tuition fees from the previous academic year have not been settled in full, which results in the university withholding his examination results, which then gets in the way of his application for the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), as he needs proof that he has successfully completed the previous year in order to be considered for funding in his second year. Even if both academic and financial points of access were overcome, Makungu, like many Fallist supporters, argues that black tax19 hinders social mobility for black graduates and their families, limiting the transformative potential of securing access to university:
A poor person has black tax that they need to pay once they start working. A poor person must fix the situation of the place they are from once they start working. If you are poor and on NSFAS it means that you are probably going to start your life nicely ten years after university. The poor should get free education not a loan, that’s if we are trying to balance the unjust [injustice] of the past..
Higher education policy in South Africa has long recognised the importance of student financial aid in helping low-income students to access university studies and to increase equity. Since its inception, the NSFAS provision of financial aid to the poorest students (with a household income below ZAR 120 000 per annum) has been instrumental in providing access to education for students from low-income and working-class backgrounds who would otherwise not have been able to access universities. Through NSFAS, the government has supported 1,5 million students, many of whom were first-generation university entrants (DHET, 2016). However, the 2010 Ministerial Review of NSFAS found that NSFAS resources have not been well governed and optimally managed since its inception, and that some 72% of NSFAS-funded students drop out, indicating that access is not being translated into (academic) success. This points to the fact that funding on its own is not the main driver of poor participation levels by especially low-income students. The intersection of funding and other factors such as accumulated disadvantage, poor schooling, access to HEIs and the persistence of these challenges is a crucial factor. It is also problematic that there are high internal inefficiencies (low throughputs/high drop-out rates) within the South African university system. In the quote below, taken from Abdulla and Wazar’s (2017) report, Babalwa’s situation raises questions about the administration of and requirements for the allocation of NSFAS funding. Babalwa clearly qualified for study at the Durban University of Technology, and comes from a very low-income household, but her application for funding was rejected multiple times, with unclear reasons for this rejection:
19 In South Africa, ‘black tax’ refers to the financial burden carried by black youth who feel and/or are obligated to help support their low-income family members, particularly upon graduation and gaining employment, or during their higher education studies.
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My siblings and I have been living with my grandmother since I was seven years old, when my parents passed on. She has been taking care of me and my four cousins, who also lost both their parents. We survive solely on her pension of ZAR 1 500 a month. I matriculated in 2013 but had to take a gap year because of financial difficulties. I have been a public relations student at DUT since 2015. After waiting months for a response from NSFAS, my grandmother called on my behalf only to find out that my application had been unsuccessful. I applied again for my second year, only to receive the same response. I applied again last year in September. My application is yet to be evaluated. I am currently doing an internship at DUT as part of the curriculum. However, I still owe my second-year fees and accommodation costs, and I do not have my results. (Babalwa Dingindlela, second-year Public Relations student at DUT)
Another concern covered widely in the media is related to NSFAS funding allocation requirements, which previously excluded students whose family incomes rose above the NSFAS threshold (at the time, ZAR 120 000 per annum) for support, but below the necessary threshold to obtain reasonable commercial loans. Below, Thando’s description of her financial circumstances captures the plight of the ‘missing middle’:
My mother works as a teacher and is the sole breadwinner at home. I live with my two siblings and a cousin, whom my mother supports on her annual income of ZAR 240 000. I know that my family is better off than many others but we’re still in a difficult position and can’t afford the fees. I have the registration amount but can’t register because I still owe last year’s fees. (Thando Ndlovu, second-year BSc student, WITS)
It is clear that in South Africa, factors affecting access to universities cannot be discussed without addressing access to financial resources. We have to consider if and how all students get a hold of the necessary funds to afford their registration, tuition, accommodation and text book fees etc., as well as think about how our university funding models affect the extent to which universities include or exclude low-income students in their quest to access and participate in higher education (see Sader & Gabela, 2017). However, as the following sections show, financial resources are the key, although not the only, determinant of access to university.
Exclusion
The transformation of institutional cultures in higher education has been identified as a crucial factor in enabling student access (see Chapter 10 and Higgins, 2007; Rhodes University, 2014;
Matthews & Tabensky, 2015). Students’ resistance to discriminatory structures is aligned with policy and academic research aimed at transformation of South African universities
(see Badat, 2007; Department of Education, 2008). Students conceptualised being excluded from higher education both in terms of financial exclusion and institutional cultures that inhibit equitable access to and participation at university (see Calitz, 2018; Wilson-Strydom, 2015). Student voices have thus highlighted the connection between access, fees and exclusion from the university, while bringing questions about institutional culture to public spaces (see also Centre for Research on Violence and Reconciliation, 2016).
#FeesMustFall has played a role in organising a national focus on institution-specific forms of resistance such as #RhodesMustFall at UCT (see Murris, 2016), #Luister at SU (see Nicolson, 2015, 2016) and #SteynMustFall, at the University of the Free State (see Luescher, Loader, & Magume, 2017). As part of these divergent movements, student voices identified institutional transformation as a condition for increasing access, with race and class playing an important role in exacerbating fee-based exclusion (see also Chetty & Knaus, 2016; Poplak, 2016). According to Ismail (2016), Tshepiso, an undergraduate at WITS, explained that:
Fees are the starting point. When I first got here I thought that Wits was bliss because I saw a bunch of white people sit with a bunch of black people, having lunch and hugging. And I didn’t realise that this is one of the most segregated places ever.
The protest movement suggests that university cultures are more likely to exclude and marginalise low-income, black and rural students at historically white and/or well-resourced universities. While some media reports have focused explicitly on the link between fees and exclusion, student activists also foregrounded the role of institutionalised racism and socio-economic stigma in exacerbating financial exclusion.
As Cele (2015) reports, student leaders positioned themselves in resistance to institutiona-lised racism and socio-economic exclusion at universities. The WITS SRC issued a statement in January 2016 that situated financial and academic exclusion alongside structural injustices (Singh, 2016):
One academic and financial exclusion is one too many, and we know that academic exclusions are often linked to financial issues because there is a campus for the rich and a campus for the poor.
By bringing these points of financial and institutional exclusion together, student protests have articulated how unequal access to resources is more likely to intensify structural forms of exclusion.
At the University of Cape Town (UCT), some undergraduate students reported being excluded due to poverty and institutionalised racism. Onishi (2015) writes about a student who grew up in an under-resourced environment, and still graduated at the top of his high school class. At UCT, the student recognised the socio-economic gap between black and white students, based on ownership of material goods such as cars. The student also pointed out how,
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in his experience, black students ranked at the bottom of academic achievement outcomes.
Onishi (2015) writes about another black, working-class student at UCT who reported his experience of structural exclusion based on his socio-economic status and race:
For someone from the townships, coming from there to here [UCT] is a huge change
… No one goes into your face and says, ‘You’re not welcome here.’ No one says that you don’t belong here. But it’s just that the structure, and the environment itself, says that I’m not welcome here.
In a different narrative, Onishi (2015) describes a student’s perspective on how socio-economic status created tension and divisions within the protest movement, which had to be negotiated as part of activists’ stance on institutional transformation:
The elephant in the room was class, … Class was never discussed. It was neatly swept underneath the rug. … I knew that if you bring up class too early in this organisation, all you would do is to split the black students … Then it would be blacks-who-have and blacks-who-don’t-have. And at UCT, you can see that quite blatantly.
As Ismail (2016) points out, a related aspect of exclusion is being unable to access the physical space of the university, including residences, due to a lack of finances:
We were staying there [sleeping in Senate House] because we don’t have money to stay [in university residences] … personally have no funding at all … In December, we ended up living in classrooms and lecture rooms and things like that. If you want to take a bath, there is nowhere to bathe, so you borrow a student card and go to the swimming pool, and you swim.
From the above excerpts, student’s experiences point to exclusion that could be framed in terms of accumulative disadvantage (Wolff & de-Shalit, 2007), where a lack of financial aid or inadequate funding to cover academic and living costs intersects with less visible forms of structural exclusion (see also Leibowitz & Bozalek, 2014). Mbembe (2016, p. 30) brings together the question of access and institutional culture in the following way: ‘When we say access, we are also saying the possibility to inhabit a space to the extent that one can say, “This is my home. I am not a foreigner. I belong here.’” Some analyses of #FeesMustFall suggest that race- and class-based oppression have been sidelined in the interpretation of the protest movement, because of the assumption that student loans and scholarships have been an adequate response to economic inequality (see Chetty & Knaus, 2016). However, the Fallist movement has directed attention to the structures at universities that perpetuate unequal access, participation and success for many black, working-class and ‘missing-middle’ students.
Resistance
While some academic and media responses to #FeesMustFall have recognised the role of student protest in resisting socio-economic inequality, others have dismissed the movement as disruptive, violent, ignorant of the financial pressures facing universities, and insensitive to students who want to continue with their studies (Chetty & Knaus, 2016). In our analysis, the #FeesMustFall movement is part of the post-apartheid class struggle in which black youth across the socio-economic spectrum are resisting institutions and policies that fail to adequately address the widening gap between socio-economic elites, the middle class and the poor. This has been achieved by aligning demands with the transformation agenda that has characterised higher education policy and academic research since the 1990s, and which has shaped subsequent policy objectives (see CHE, 2013; DHET, 2013). Adam Habib, the Vice-Chancellor of WITS, acknowledged that the movement ‘achieved in seven days what we vice chancellors had been talking about for a decade’ (Ismail, 2016) while a university lecturer from WITS states that the movement has initiated ‘a conversation [that]
the university should have had the integrity to have before students had to be the ones to push it’ (Ismail, 2016; see also Poplak, 2016).
Abdulla and Wazar (2017) quote an undergraduate student at Rhodes University, who affirmed the movement’s positive impact on fees and funding:
Before Fees Must Fall, Rhodes University registration was 50% of your fees, this means one was required to pay +/– ZAR 45 000.00 in January. That’s a lot! It was an institution excluding the poor. And by the end of the second term/block you were required to pay all your fees. Now it’s 10% for registration, which is reasonable.
However, not all students support the movement and its chosen tactics of protest, which have included disrupting classes, tests and exams, and vandalising university property. In response, some academics have resisted the misrepresentation of students as disruptive:
Modern forms of class prejudice are invisible even to the perpetrators, who remain unconvinced of the class struggle of black youth. They dismiss it as unruly behaviour and a lack of respect for the new ‘progressive’ order governing universities. Protesters are berated for not understanding universities’ financial pressures; they are viewed as being insensitive to their peers who just want to get on with their education without disruptions. (Chetty & Knaus, 2016)
In light of our argument above, the aim of this section is to understand how student protesters conceptualised their resistance to inequality during #FeesMustFall. We identify students’ call for decolonised education as a tool to bring attention to and address issues that underlie the nexus between access to universities, structural inequalities in higher education and in wider society.
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