Professor Habib speaks after protest

The Vice Chancellor of Wits University came out to address his protesting students, tempers were flaring but yet he walked right up to the centre of the protest.

Professor Adam Habib was immediately swallowed up by a sea of students and the cameras were flashing everywhere and that is where Prof Habib stayed for the next 18 hours. “I was never afraid, I trusted my students and knew that they would never harm me, even when it seemed as though the situation may get out of hand. I never felt like a hostage,” he explained. He admitted to being an activist himself in his younger days and said that he firmly believed in the students’ cause, and pointed out that one of the challenges that vice chancellors all over South Africa experienced was ensuring that students who come from poor backgrounds should also be afforded an opportunity to experience world-class education.

“South African democracy has not yet succeeded in creating a society where poor people are not marginalised,” he noted.

He admited that the proposed 10.5 per cent fees increase was unsustainable but added that the university was pushed into a corner after their plans of approaching the banks as well as the president failed to meet an agreeable solution.

Prof Habib pointed out the different models that can be used to achieve the much debated topic of free education, comparing the European and African models of free education.

“I don’t think that free education is immediately a reality but rather we could say free education for students in need can be implemented if we simply did a level of re-prioritisation of spending State money,” Habib said.

The Vice Chancellor estimated that the shortfall that was caused by the zero per cent fees increase for next year was between R171 and R172 million and that the university needed the state to cover at least around R150 million.

However, he is adamant that students who benefit from the NSFAS would not suffer as the fund had been increased by R2 billion for the next academic year.

He said that the student protest showed that social action can open up possibilities of change and that when the reality of a zero per cent fees increase was possible, all the vice chancellors changed their tunes and supported the zero per cent fees campaign with the State subsidising the shortfall.

“If the university was forced to absorb the cost of these decisions on their own they would have to cut cost and the value and quality of higher education goes down as well,” he noted.

“We are here to rebuild and to ensure that this university operates in a way that provides access to poor people and continuing to provide world-class education to its tsudents. The university will continue to build a more inclusive society,” he concluded.

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