SA’s government and universities are caught between a rock and a very hard place, in the wake of the country’s biggest mass uprising since the demise of apartheid in 1994. The #FeesMustFall student protests in October last year forced the ANC to finally take concrete steps towards a pledge it first made in 2007 and then repeated in 2012: to make university education available to the country’s poor majority.
This is a very tall order right now, given the economy’s downturn, which has eroded tax revenue and forced the Treasury to draw down its financial reserve buffer to address development spending priorities and fund a much larger than expected increase in public wages over the next three years, without getting too deep into debt.
The depletion of the entire R5 billion contingency reserve in the financial year 2015/16 has removed what would have been the easiest way to pay for the zero fee increase promised by President Jacob Zuma after thousands of students protested against plans for double-digit hikes next year. That’s created a R2,3 billion shortfall which government and universities have agreed to address jointly, with the lion’s share – about 70% – shouldered by the state.
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