Dear Comrade Dave,

(David Maimela, former Sasco President and former president of SRC at Tukkies, now researcher at MISTRA)

Thank you for provocatively extracting an opinion from me on this matter of #FeesMustFall. As you know, due to my position in government I always avoid commenting on issues where perceptions of conflict of interest might arise. Of course my seniors reason a lot so they always distinguish between the pedestrian opinions contained herein and expositions that might bring the state into disrepute.

But more pointedly, you want to know why senior people in the ruling party are supportive of #FeesMustFall when they preside over the resources and state power yet lament the state of affairs as if they are in the opposition benches like #AskMmusi, who was chased away by protesting students this week.

Well my friend I am not a spokesperson so I can’t give you the official line. But I have an inkling of why there is popular support for #FeesMustFall. Let me give this a shot, without sounding like a Social Development official ranting about social grants or a taxi operator who screams “these taxi people can’t drive” – well I did say that when I worked as an usicabha boy (taxi conductor) while trying to survive as a university student.

The first problem I think is the backward manner in which students are being treated by university authorities, who are very patronising. They regard students as children with no agency. More often than not, students are bullied and treated in a condescending manner, with negative things being said about the student leadership.

If you ever fail a course, they leak your records so the whole world looks at you with a suspicious eye. This is not new. People like Professor Paulus Zulu of the University of KwaZulu-Natal used to play those dirty games and even plant stories in the newspapers about the academic performance of student leaders.

Many vice-chancellors like the University of the Free State’s Jonathan Jansen are on record saying student leaders are uncultured, show no creativity, don’t value education, etc. Yet they preside over billions of rands’ worth of intellectual capital which they can draw on to enrol the student in various strategic leadership courses such as the art of negotiations, diversity, political theory, international relations, etc.

But that is not the point. It is not about the students’ (in)ability to bargain during fee negotiations or them making politically divisive statements. For authorities, the issue is ideology and the craft is the exercise of power.

If students don’t buy into what the authorities are selling, they are often labelled all manner of pejoratives. I once put it to Professor Adam Habib of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) that instead of expelling Mcebo Dlamini, maybe Wits should have mobilised its internal intellectual resources to get Mcebo to learn and appreciate history and international relations, thus building a proper understanding of why there is no room for progressive people to celebrate any inch of Nazi Germany.

Many people observe this disdainful attitude towards the students and sympathise. I for one am fully behind them. We were treated the same way as student leaders in the late 1990s. Also as a parent, I think it shows a lack of insight to close down campuses each time there is a riot. There are civilised ways of stabilising the situation rather than putting students out on the streets where they become vulnerable to all manner of situations due to their socio-economic conditions. This is what homeland and apartheid administrators used to do. Just check how easy it is for the Tshwane University of Technology to issue ultimatums about removing poor students from campus.

Many people also find it odd that these institutions have senior leaders who offer opinions about matters of governance in the state (as they are fully entitled to do) yet they can’t apply some of their recommendations to their present situations. They shout: Accountability! Creativity! Transparency! Transformation! Yet the principles are not extended locally. As I said, due to my occupation, there are ethical bounds (not necessarily legal) to what I can and cannot say.

I suspect many people see these varsity administrators commenting on many national issues and ask themselves: Why can’t they use all their capital to address students’ and workers’ concerns in their own institutions? I am attracted by this question. How can the holders of intellectual capital behave the same way as some small corner cafe which struggles to deal with a fluke cook who eats most of the cheese rather than serve it to customers? Many academics who occupy the public discourse space bemoan poor stakeholder consultation and communication from the state. Better still, many universities offer training and mediation services when there are strikes in many industries. What about offering these to their sector and institutions? Or it is a case of ‘isangoma doesn’t diagnose and heal a family member’?

We are not blind, Comrade Dave. We see these double standards.

Now let us get more political.

I argue that Wits, Rhodes, the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Stellenbosch in particular are deeply entrenched in the cycle of the global neo-liberal elitism,whose hierarchy is based on race and gender. This produces undesirable outcomes for the students.

These institutions are chasing global ratings, spending huge resources trying to complete or match the Ivy League institutions of North America and Europe. This hampers their ability to deal constructively with local issues or, as Marxists would say, they miss the contemporary moment. The upside of chasing global ratings is that graduates of Wits, UCT, etc can boast about their alma mater believing this increases their chances in the global labour market. It also promotes the work of researchers.

The downside, however, is that these institutions are missing the point: they are making a leap before they set a solid base from which to address the lack of transformation, resolve students grievances and make these universities more relevant and responsive to the national development agenda. That is why university spaces are bureaucratised and securitised instead of being open public spaces of thought, discourse and learning. You pay to access everything – even research that is publicly funded.

Even worse, those institutions chasing international recognition are actually comparing themselves with wrong institutions – largely private universities in North America and Europe that have billions in endowments. By the way, most of the students who study at Yale, Harvard, the London School of Economics and Oxford are on full scholarships. Therefore the costs don’t really matter.

Finally, chasing membership of the neo-liberal league has seen the transplanting of the commercialisation of education and all university services, hence students and unions are now saying #InSourceServices. Residences are being turned into self-catering accommodation charged at premium. You are a student at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) so you know what I am talking about.

Just look at what commercialisation has done to the tertiary institutions in Australia. Just as well that guy is no longer prime minister: the fellow was privatising higher education.

By the way, not all of the money being spent on so-called top academics is good value for money. Some are just nice to have in the profiles of faculties and the costs are passed on to the students. And before I forget, Comrade Dave, I have sat on countless panels since I became a senior manager at the ripe old age of 26. I am not in a position to confirm that Wits, UCT, Stellenbosch and Rhodes graduates are more competent than graduates from Limpopo and Fort Hare. Parents are charged top dollar but students from UJ and Venda are equally hungry for success and very competitive. At least in government we don’t patronise them like the private sector and send them on countless training programmes which are meant to keep them in the junior ranks. We hire them and they deliver even though their degrees cost half of what our ‘Ivy Leagues’ charge.

There is this incestous thing called academic freedom. It is a very perverted thing. In Canada for example, the state regulates the percentage by which universities can increase fees. The range is about 4%. The main point is that public universities there don’t hypocritically claim academic freedom. They fully appreciate that they are public institutions with a developmental mandate. Now tell me: should we take seriously people who increase fees by 12% when their workers are told to moderate their salary demands to below the 6% inflation rate? Should we shake their hands when they increase fees so late in the year that even students with bursaries will end up having shortfalls as their sponsors would have already made their financial commitments for the forthcoming year? Should we really just keep quiet because if the state intervenes it will violate the principles of academic freedom? No, Dave, I tend to differ. I call this perversion because it is not consistently applied.

I remain confused about why these universities can’t creatively leverage their positions to mobilise capital for all their students. They can use their large endowments and access to social capital in South Africa and international multinational companies where their funders and former students work. They can leverage National Student Financial Aid Scheme funding to raise millions from the financial market.

This is a schizophrenia that is playing itself out with students at the margins. The rate of commercialisation is greater than the state funding increases and has long passed what bursaries can afford either. The African National Congress spokesperson is correct: fee increases are anti-black. Whatever the motivation for these excessive increases, the consequence is that children from poor and middle-class black families are negatively affected – and now white lower-middle-class households are affected as well. We judge the outcomes not the intention.

Before I forget, I hope you are paying attention to the level of diversity and maturity displayed by these sons and daughters of the revolution. They are breaking all racial and gender stereotypes. There is political tolerance and unity of action. Faculties that study society need to take a closer look. They are smart kids motivated by one thing: to fight injustice. And then the police decide to make them martyrs by bungling them into police vans. They take pictures with their smartphones and post them on social media and public opinion turns in their favour. Now that is smart politicking, Dave.

Be well my friend and remember those #TranformTukkies activists look up to you as a former student leader there. DM

Busani Ngcaweni is co-editor of the forthcoming book Nelson R. Mandela: Decolonial Ethics of Liberation and Servant Leadership (Africa World Press). He is also Deputy Director-General & Head of the Private Office of the Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.