Wits protests: The high price of failed promises

Desperation for education – the only way out of poverty for many people – is encapsulated in two tragic stories which show how quickly desperation becomes frustration and then violence.

Outside Wits University, for the second day in a row, police fought running battles with students who want to ensure they get funding to continue their university education.

In the chaos, police fired rubber bullets at close range at a man who wasn’t a student – and he died, becoming tragic collateral damage in a situation rapidly spiralling out of control.

In Limpopo, angry community members chased away a principal from a school where all of the matric pupils who wrote last year, failed. In both cases, there are fundamental misunderstandings layered on top of sky-high expectations, which are often fuelled by overpromising politicians.

In the case of the university, there was an expectation by many students that they should get free education to degree level – as had been promised magnanimously by then president Jacob Zuma shortly before he left office.

The “fees must fall” movement also created high expectations… but the government cannot possibly meet those expectations because, even before Covid-19 devastated the economy and tax income, it was already struggling to find money for services.

In Limpopo, the people who chased away the school principal expect that their community school should be registered as an examination centre, despite the low matric enrolment there.

Their children were forced to walk up to 15km to write the exams at another school. The problem is that there are a number of these schools which were built but, now, don’t have enough pupils to fill them.

But no one wants schools to merge and parents still expect a magic matric pass. We, as a country, have to become more realistic in what we expect government to deliver.

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