A call for free quality education led to student protests in 2015, the biggest since the end of apartheid,

has always been informed by a well-known history of oppression & the exclusion of the majority from the affairs of our country; the history of a system which deliberately impoverished our people & defined them as inferior/ sub-human, unable to play any meaningful role in the building of South Africa.

In line with a long-standing promise of “a better life for all”, we believe that the ANC government has a responsibility to make education accessible to all South Africans. Access has for the past 26 years proved to be impossible for many of our people because of the price tag attached to education.

Access which is based on money has evidently worked against many deserving young people of this country as one of the biggest patterns of exclusion in the higher education sector.

It is against this background that the state must then make the means to remove the burden of a price tag for all deserving students in order for access to be a reality for all.

In order for our generational mission of economic freedom to be fully realized in our lifetime, we are duty-bound as a generation to fight for the implementation of free education.

For a country like ours where the top 1% of the population owns 67% of the economy, where the top 10% owns 93% of the economy, and where 90% of the population have to share the remaining 7%, surely it is fair to say that the burden of a price tag for the poor gives an unfair advantage to the children of the ruling class & further perpetuates the legacy of apartheid in all its shapes & forms.in order for the ANC to achieve the ultimate goal of the National Democratic Society (NDS) through the National Democratic Revolution (NDR), the ANC led government must implement free education. The attachment of a price tag to education is in it’s natural given the history of our country, discriminatory & violent to the previously marginalised masses of our people.

We, therefore, find it disingenuous for the Finance Minister, Comrade Tito Mboweni, to have cut the education budget without consultation with those greatly affected by the cut. It is not only an attack on our generation but also a course of betrayal to the ANC’s NDR. The responsibility of the minister & his colleagues in this regard was supposed to be found- ing alternative means for the state to maximize its capital in order to meet this genuine demand. One of the means, for instance, can be to force the ruling class to meet the government halfway in financing free education. This can be done through increasing the corporate tax, just as the government easily increased Value Added Tax (VAT) in 2018 which is much more of a burden to the poor than it is to the rich.

We believe that government should commit at least 1.5% of the country’s GDP to education in order to remove the burden of a price tag for the poor deserving students. There are many other alternative means which can be debated in trying to find the best possible option of financing free education & young people should be allowed space to make progressive contributions in this regard.

The 1st thing that we must 1st establish though from the finance minister & all relevant ANC deployees in government as a point of departure, is whether there is a political will & a commitment to the course.

Education is a right & public good, and it must be treated as such. That would, as a matter of fact, be the beginning of dismantling the status quo which has been instrumental to the economic gaps where the poor are getting poor while the rich are getting rich.

We will always stand ready to defend this call when the ruling class & the political elite try to demonize our call & to make it look & sound irrational.

“In line with a long-standing promise of “a better life for all”, we believe that the ANC government has a responsibility to make education accessible to all South Africans. Access has for the past 26 years proved to be impossible for many of our people because of the price tag attached to education.”

“We believe that government should commit at least 1.5% of the country’s GDP to education in order to remove the burden of a price tag for the poor deserving students.”