Unit 4: Enriching Exchanges (1ère AMC)

 (At the following of what we did last time)

It is interesting to note that at the time, white families had an average income that was 6 times higher than for black families. This created an economic gap between the two ethnic groups. On top of that, the government reduced their financial support by 9% for education. At the same time, tuition fees rose by 7%.

To conclude, in order to be able to receive equal education, students started to organize the largest student movement in the history of South Africa to demand zero tuition fee.  They were fighting for free decolonized education.  

The Outcome of the #FeesMustFall Protests

The document under study is an article from BBC News Johannesburg published on April 30^th 2019. It is about two students from a poor background who were able to go to the university thanks to the #FeesMustFall protests in South Africa.

In fact, we have learned that Mr. Ndata a South African student lost hope of going back to university due to the high tuition fees. However, thanks to the student protests he was able to benefit from a free tuition at the age of 30. Indeed, the government paid for his studies.

As a matter of fact, after the students’ movement that was successful, the new scheme/program/plan was introduced in 2018. Families with an income of less than 350,000 rand (17,700 €) a year could benefit from it.

For some people, education is so important that some families would be ready to go hungry just to be able to pay the tuition fees for their children for them to have a better life.

The consequences of the new scheme led to a growth of the number of students from poor backgrounds who could access to higher education. Moreover, some students are also coming back to complete their studies as they had to drop out previously when they could not afford to pay the tuition fees.

Nevertheless, the new scheme can be profitable for everyone. In fact, there is a group called the “missing middle”. They are students who are too rich to benefit from the new scheme, but too poor to afford the tuition fees.

To conclude, some think that the focus should be mess about providing free education; it should be more about making sure that more universities are available across the country so that families would have the possibility to send their children to the city of their choice in order to avoid great expenses.

Homework: Learn the lesson.