South African Students Congress (SASCO) held a bilateral meeting with Minister Dr Blade Nzimande and Deputy Minister Buti Manamela of Department of Higher Education, Science and Innovation today, the 21st of April 2020, following the demands made by SASCO to the Department and National Command Council. The demands were made in the midst of anxiety of students and some progressive academics on what needs to be done to save the academic year. As the student movement we went to the meeting carrying aspirations of thousands of South African students who want to complete the academic year whilst not leaving other students behind.
As an organisation we carried the #BoycottOnlineLearning struggle as a battle cry to rally poor students from working class backgrounds who were going to fall victim, if the concept of e-learning was carried without paying attention to the socio-economic issues faced by our country.
Listed below are some of our key resolutions and commitments between ourselves and the department:
1. From the 1st of June 2020, the first group of students will be allowed back to their respective residences and resume with contact learning classes. Students will be screened and tested for Covid-19 upon their return to their residences and campuses (Traveling Amendments and Protocol will be communicated).
2. N + 2 Students to be funded: To refer to the max period of funding for a course of study that government will cover in the form of a bursary. Not the number of years registered at a tertiary institution.
3. Devices will be allocated to all deserving students.
4. Universal approach for access for Historically Disadvantaged Institution’s.
5. We agreed on a consolidation of TVET Colleges plan for contact learning.
6. TVET teaching and learning to resume early May 2020.
7. Rework academic calendar as guided by the National Command Council.
8. Late registrations to be allowed aligned to NSFAS appeals results.
9. Disbursement of NSFAS allowances to be realigned to the reworked academic year.
10. SASCO and Higher Health to partner in:
a) Training of volunteers for Peer Helpers,
b) Campus clinics to be capacitated to respond effectively to the mental and covid-19 related challenges,
C) Erection of conducive quarantine sites for students,
We will continue to lobby all progressive forces to boycott the planned resumption of online teaching and learning on the 4 May 2020, for the 1st of June 2020 where indeed no one will be left behind.
SASCO is taken aback by the attempts of South African network providers to preserve white supremacy and privilege. Their attempts of flirting with the current status quo are exposed by their partnership with historically white and advantaged institutions while rejecting working with the department. This is a systematic way of making sure that historically black institutions remain undeveloped and disadvantaged. Our reminder to these companies is that poor students buy their expensive data and their gesture is an open declaration of war with SASCO.
The network service providers have shown unwillingness to make their moral obligation and contribution towards assisting our people in these trying times. Network service providers have been pillaging our people unabated for very long and now are arrogantly showing their parasitic nature.
Government must work with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to establish a data centre geared at supporting all social services in our society.
Issued by SASCO NEC
Bamanye Matiwane
President
&
Buthanani Ngwane
Secretary General
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