Students at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University have called on business to help finance university education. Photo: Joseph Chirume
7 October 2016
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University students have launched an appeal to the local business community for funds for free education.
About 500 protesters marched to the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber offices in Port Elizabeth.
Some held posters on which was written “Poor not Criminal” and “FeesMustFall”. One protester who had tied a red cloth around her face held a placard reading “You [ANC] sold our parents Dreams, We are here to make them come true. #FeesWillFall, qha ke”.
NMMU Economic Freedom Front leader Awethu Fatwela said, “We are calling for the business community to come on board and help the struggling students.”
Student leader Thandeka Tshabalala said, “We are saying to the business community that they should make contributions to the issue of fees at the universities. This struggle is not beneficial to the struggling students only, but to everybody, them included.”
Tshabalala said most businesses drew their professional workforce from students.
Responding to the decision by some 4,000 parents to approach the courts soon to compel the university to open, Tshabalala said, “We have 4,000 students from rich families who can afford to go back to university and continue with their studies, but the majority cannot afford to pay for their studies. We are saying to the 4,000 parents that our call for free education is a clear one. We are saying that we can not continue as normal. Our students continue to be excluded year in and year out. We are not going anywhere as a country and as a university.”
Grahamstown lawyer Brin Brody of Wheeldon, Rushmere and Cole, is to represent a group of parents who want the university open. Today they will hand over a petition to NMMU asking the university to open within 24 hours, failing which they will approach the courts.