Recap: NMMU Mass Meeting over #FeesMustFall Student Movement
A students perspective weeks after #FeesMustFall
Two weeks ago students exhibited their strength as future leaders of our country by participating in protests on a national university level against the fees increase for 2016, the exclusivity of education fee rates and the outsourcing of workers in universities across the country.
NMMU in particular joined in on the action, protesting along with the national shut down of universities in solidarity with students striking in different parts of the country. It took three business days to get a response from the university’s management, on the terms of NMMU students. The response was in the form of a mass meeting between the university management, staff and students to have an open dialogue on the issues that the students wished to resolve with the university’s management.
The students had many grievances to be hashed out at the mass meeting and drew up a memorandum of demands that included the rules of engagement for the commencement of the meeting with the NMMU VC, Prof Derrick Swartz, of which if the demands of the students could not be met or agreed upon, the student body intended to resume with the shutdown of the university, seizing all academic activity once more.
The rules of engagement as set out by the students included the guarantee of no disciplinary action against students who had participated in the shutdown, the provision of post-protest counselling for students and the rescheduling of tests and academic support in preparation of the approaching examinations due to time lost during protest, to which Swartz agreed.
The mass meeting continued as students and management discussed the way forward on the grievances of the students. The memorandum of demands included funding related issues such as academic exclusion of students due to debt or lack of funds and qualifying students being taken off NSFAS as well as increasing the number of disadvantaged students covered by the VC scholarship. Another key issue was the standardization of fees for African nationals in line with South African student fees. In addition to that, the students demanded the university lay charges against the SAPS who allegedly unleashed tear gas and rubber bullets on peaceful protesting students as they were sitting in the road and the absorption of the Supacare workers as NMMU employees with employee benefits to put an end to outsourcing of workers at the university.
The mass meeting ended in a reconciliatory spirit as the student, management and VC were able to reach a signed agreement on many of the matters discussed at the meeting, some of which required further investigation and research by a task team that would go about examining the feasibility of some the decisions made and how they could possibly be implemented over time. The VC promised transparency on these probes and would communicate outcomes with the students within the agreed time frames of each issue.
NMMU student, Lina Mpolase appreciated the way in which the mass meeting was conducted and went on to say, “The people of NMMU listened and we are grateful; however we are far from done.”
The success of the meeting further led to the promise of continued mass meetings with students, staff and management every semester to tackle issues that affect the students of NMMU.