If matriculants who wrote matric in the year 2017 is around 798 289 as announced by Priscilla Nkubajo, then Wits Vision 2022 is just another stress factor that South Africa should be prepared. The vision states that Wits will increase the international student’s intake by 30% which in fact a lot of faculties are not supporting and again increase Postgraduate intake by 50% of the total enrolment. This simply means that they will only take 20% undergraduates students of the total enrolment.
As the leading University in South Africa, it is giving all the other Universities an idea to follow its footsteps. If they do what Wits is planning to do, what will happen to the 700 000 matriculants? How will a child from Tshimbupfe and Mukomausinanndu pursue his or her dreams of becoming the best Lawyer or Mining Engineer from Wits and eradicate poverty at their homes? Their dreams will remain just pure dreams.
If South Africa is currently sitting on a ridiculous 27.7% of unemployment rate, they should be prepared for an increase to that percentage in the next 3 years to come all because of one University that acts as if they are above the government because of whoever is funding it. If Wits feels so strong about the development they are preaching about, they should just go and use the big portions of vacant land they own to build Research Institutions. Development and innovation cannot come at the expense of the future of the poor masses who want to run away from poverty.
Just as they have even come up with various models to fund postgraduates, we would really appreciate it if they can do the very same thing and go to the end of the world to find other models to fund students who still cannot afford to study at Wits. A mere R83 600 allocated by NSFAS to returning students is nothing but an insult. How do you expect a student to stay and study at Wits with that amount of money? What Wits is doing is simply asking for a war that will never come to an end, Wits should know better that the students never forget. A lot of students are still sleeping in libraries and Wits has money to fund their vision. It then tells students that they really do not care about the well-being of students.
it is still too expensive to study and live at Wits. In South Africa education is still a commodity and will remain as such if universities such as Wits do as they like.
They have turned into the biggest ‘’Tenderpreneurs” just like how Sibu would put it. They extract billions of subsidies from the government and the very same subsidies fail to satisfy their appetite and students are expected to feed this monopolies. The threat that Wits is bringing to the floor is clear indication that poor matriculants, in fact the entire student community is not safe.
Wits preaches about transformation, but vision 2022 is nothing but a contradiction to what they believe they are doing. 22 years after the so-called democracy we still have institutions that are making it hard to enter within the higher learning systems. We should ask as to whether students have defeated the enemy or not. It is in times like this wherein we should ask ourselves as to what is going to happen within such institutions in 10 years.
As Prof. P.L.O Lumumba would ask ‘’ Are we children of a lesser God?’’ It goes without saying that we are moving towards hard times for the poor masses, the idea of taking back the land has resulted in a lot of strategies from the ones who think that they are being attacked.
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