Protests continue in 3 universities over fee

By Ehsan Khaleel
Protests Correspondent, SAM Daily Times

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - Protests at three of the country's universities look set to continue this morning over fees.

The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has failed to pay the fees for thousands of students leading to protests in Johannesburg and Durban yesterday.

No reason has been given by the scheme for the non-payment.

Registration was briefly interrupted as a group of University of Johannesburg (UJ) students sang and blew vuvuzelas at the Kingsway Campus yesterday.

Similar scenes were seen in Durban at the Durban University of Technology and the Mangosuthu University of Technology where lectures were disrupted by protesting students.

NSFAS is a government run scheme and universities and technikons are simply administrators of the scheme's loans and bursaries.

UJ says students need to take up their grievances with the Department of Higher Education or NSFAS itself.

Meanwhile, UJ’s Student Representative Council (SRC) says university management needs to assist the students in resolving their funding problems before demonstrations at the institution can end.

UJ SRC president Levy Masete says the demonstrations are gaining momentum.

“We will demonstrate every day until our needs are met.”


Masete says they want the university to suspend the registration process.

“The registration process must be halted so we can resolve this issue and once it is solved, everyone can go register.”