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SHERI HAMILTON 17. PEDAGOGY OF STRUGGLE #OutsourcingMustFall INTRODUCTION In October 2015, 10000 university students gathered at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital, to demand the scrapping of proposed fee increases and the insourcing of workers. #FeesMustFall (FMF), the banner adopted, unified protests initially directed against apartheid-like practices such as language policies and colonial symbols at historically white universities. At its height, FMF demonstrated the potential to unite the decade-long, often militant but uncoordinated student protests against academic and financial exclusions mainly at historically black universities. It was the FMF’s economic demands – no fee increases – that enabled it to grow into a national movement that forced the government to concede. This demand united the majority of students – the poorest, the ‘missing middle’1 – and attracted the sympathies of wealthier students. FMF not only temporarily halted fee increases, but secured in-principle agreements to scrap the outsourcing of workers at some historically white universities – a practice that was embedded in the restructuring of higher education rooted in the neoliberal economic policy, Growth Employment and Redistribution, adopted in 1996 by the African National Congress (ANC)-led government. As fresh protests broke out a year later following the announcement of fee increases that will be capped at eight per cent for the 2017 academic year, the threat to student unity is posed by differentially applied increases. Students are demanding free education while government has exempted poor students who are recipients of its loan scheme, excluding the ‘missing middle’ for whose funding government is appealing to the private sector.
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