Friday 16 October 2015

NUMSA BACKS #WitsFeesMustFall STRUGGLE BY WITS STUDENTS

Friday 16 October 2015

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, on behalf of its 365 000 members, fully backs the ongoing class struggle by Wits University students. We are opposed to the 10,5% fee hikes and continued commodification of education, a reflection of how aspects of the 1994 negotiated political settlement are wrecking our society’s public goods. The policy of fiscal austerity, agreed to with the International Monetary Fund and world financiers as early as December 1993, has taken on new dimensions, with Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene failing to grant our university students the tuition and survival funds long promised our up-and-coming leaders.

This ongoing struggle is happening at the backdrop of deepening levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality, mostly affecting Black African working communities, as a result of the disastrous and failed neoliberal policy choices being championed by the fast-fading ANC/SACP governing Alliance.

Without better national subsidies, Wits’ excessive tuition hikes are going to be a huge socio-economic burden to the workers, who are responsible for the education of their children. Already, workers are feeling the pinch as a result of Apartheid colonial wages they are being paid; but most importantly they have a burden of taking care of the vast army of the unemployed in our Townships; squatter and former Bantustan areas. The out-sourced workers at Wits are a clear example, with Vice Chancellor Adam Habib refusing to undo the damage of prior administrations, and heeding the October 6 Movement’s demand that the lowest-paid people at Wits be “in-sourced” and paid a living wage.

The struggles by students for free, compulsory and public education, as promised in the Freedom Charter, will also require launching an offensive on the neoliberal trajectory of the ANC, that denies the entire working class and poor citizenry of our country access to essential basic goods, especially quality health-care and free education.

The working class and youth coalition not only played a key role in dismantling the Apartheid system, but also regularly swamped the streets of our country to reject the mis-named Growth; Employment and Redistribution Strategy (GEAR) imposed on the working class of South Africa by the ANC in 1996, and worsened with the stewardship of the aloof President Thabo Mbeki after 1999.

The continued failure by the ANC/SACP governing Alliance to deliver free education will have the effect of reproducing cheap, uneducated Black African labour in the interests of the exploiting class and their friends in imperialist and foreign-owned Stock Exchanges in New York, London and Melbourne.

We call on the fighting students not to soften their demands, but to continue supporting Wits workers’ fight against out-sourcing, and to remain resolute until the State concedes to their demands, and so many others being tabled by our working class. The lack of political will by the governing ANC/SACP to roll-out free education, as promised in successive elections, should be a wake-up call to the working-class youth to forge a Youth-Worker Alliance within the emerging United Front, in order to force the State to concede to their demands and aspirations.

As Numsa, we remain committed to jointly work with all progressive youth, student and worker formations towards the realisation of all the key demands of the Freedom Charter. It is through collective actions and struggle we make sure that our demands are met. Now is the time for all these formations to tear down the walls erected by neoliberalism, which serves to divide students/youth struggles and workers on the shopfloor.

Contact:

Sizwe Dlamini

Regional Secretary

Jack Charles Buizendenhout (Wits Central)

M: 071 874 8228

E: sizwed@numsa.org.za