A-Infos (en) South-Africa, Revolutionary Anarchism #8 - Students and Staff Protest University Privatisation by Lucien van der Walt

Announcements of steep fee increases and the planned privatisation of student 
accommodation sparked major protests at the University of the Witwatersrand 
(Wits) in Johannesburg, South Africa, in October. The fee hikes are the latest 
consequence of the university's neo-liberal "Wits 2001 plan", which has cut 
spending, outsourced workers and promoted the commercialisation of research and 
teaching. ---- REVOLT ON CAMPUS ----   Following a series of late night 
mobilisations in the university residences, hundreds of Wits students - mainly 
African and working class - marched on the morning of Wednesday 3 October to 
make clear their opposition to the management's decisions.

Frustrated with official university forums
that prevent student voices from making a
real impact on policy, students disrupted
lectures and an ever-growing crowd surged
around campus.
   By midday, tensions were mounting, and
Wits management launched a media offen-
sive against the students - and called on
lecturers to report protestors. Lecture dis-
ruptions are forbidden under the universi-
ty's Code of Conduct, but have long been a
standard part of the student protest reper-
toire: class and race divisions amongst stu-
dents mean that the African working class
minority is not easily able to shut down
campus activities by other means.
   The protests continued the following day,
and progressive academics, grouped in the
Concerned Staff Committee, as well as a
number of outsourced Wits workers, pub-
licly joined the students' protests. That
afternoon, riot police clashed with students,
several of whom were arrested. Members
of the Concerned Staff Committee were
also called into a meeting with top man-
agement. The campaign continued over
the next few days. Despite a hostile media,
which routinely presented the protestors as
vandals and troublemakers, the message
was loud and clear: no to fees hikes, not to
privatisation, open the bourgeois universi-
ty!
   The academics' support was warmly
received by the crowds, now around 500
strong, and helped underline that the prob-
lems faced by the students were part of a
larger set of problems in higher education
as a whole. What is happening at Wits is
part of the post-apartheid ANC govern-
ment's neo-liberal agenda, which is backed
by the local ruling class and is reinforced
by the General Agreement on Trade in
Services (GATS), the World Trade
Organisation treaty that promotes the com-
mercialisation of social services; the ANC
government is a GATS signatory. In the
higher education sector, this has involved a
combination of funding cuts to public uni-
versities like Wits, and pressure to turn the
universities into profit-driven "market uni-
versities". Wits, for example, saw its State
funding fall by a third in the late 1990s; in
the mid-1980s, around 80% of university
money came from the State; today the fig-
ure is around 39%. The result is fees
hikes, declining financial aid for poor stu-
dents, and a drive to cut costs and promote
commercial activities.

WITS 2001

   Back in 1999, Wits adopted the Wits 2001
programme as its manifesto for neo-liberal
restructuring.     The immediate conse-
quence was the dismissal of over 600
workers - a quarter of Wits' total staff- and
the outsourcing of their jobs in catering,
cleaning, grounds and maintenance in
2000. The struggle to prevent this out-
sourcing - covered in Zabalaza, and widely
in the anarchist press elsewhere - was a
key moment in the rise of new social move-
ments like the Anti-Privatisation Forum,
which have come out directly against the
ANC's programme. The outsourcing was
accompanied by a series of mergers and
rationalisation of academic functions, and
then the establishment of a special unit,
Wits Enterprise, tasked with commercialis-
ing university activities. As profit and
power are so closely intertwined, it is also
not surprising that the restructuring was
accompanied by a rapid centralisation of
management power as well.
   The conflicts this year - centred around a
proposed 25% increase in upfront fees, a
500% increase in admin fees for students
coming from outside southern Africa, an
average increase of student fees by 8%,
and the planned privatisation of two stu-
dent residences - must, then, be seen as
part of a longer struggle around the nature
of higher education - and the future of Wits.
The defeat in 2000 quietened the campus.
   The silence was broken in 2004 by stu-
dent riots, a strike by outsourced workers in
2006, and now, more struggles. Anarchists
have been involved in these university
struggles for many years, as militants, as
organisers, as speakers, as writers.

THINK GLOBALLY

   As we write, it seems the struggle is end-
ing in premature negotiations that will per-
haps win some important concessions for
students. However, a sustained struggle
can only take place if links are made
between the different campuses, between
the students and the staff (including aca-
demics, but also support and administra-
tion workers), and if the weak and divided
trade unionism in the sector is overcome.
This requires a unifying programme includ-
ing demands for access to higher educa-
tion for the working class, the reversal of
outsourcing, the end to privatisation and
commercialisation, and a challenge to
State policy.
   As struggles without clear ideas are often
struggles aborted too soon, it is important
to recognise that the struggle in higher
education is part of the struggle against the
ANC's neoliberal policies, and the ruling
class which lies behind them. Many of the
student protestors were, in fact, members
of ANC-linked youth groups, and the role of
the ANC was consequently obscured.
   But we are confident that the links are
being drawn between neoliberal policies at
Wits, at the universities more generally, the
massive layoffs in the country, the commu-
nity struggles against cut-offs and evic-
tions, and so, too the ANC, the State and
capitalism.       The struggle continues:
protests against fee hikes, partly inspired
by the Wits protests, have begun at the
University of Johannesburg. And these
are, in turn, part of the global resistance
struggles in universities and elsewhere,
struggles that are against the GATS,
neoliberalism, and capitalism.
Note: This article was originally written for Le
Combat Syndicaliste and will also be run in an
upcoming issue of that paper.

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Extracted from: http://www.zabalaza.net/pdfs/sapams/zab08.pdf
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