/REPEAT/SOUTH AFRICA-EDUCATION: Black Universities in Trouble

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gumisai Mutume

JOHANNESBURG, Feb 3 1998 (IPS) - Some of the people who once graced the lecture rooms of Fort Hare went on to become famous African political and intellectual leaders, but the university that produced them has now fallen on lean times.

Not that the alma mater of personalities like presidents Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Robert Mugabe, his Zimbabwean counterpart, is the only former Blacks-only institution in difficulty. Generally, escalating student debts have brought South Africa’s historically disadvantaged universities (HDUs), as they are now called, to the verge of collapse.

Students owed the country’s 21 universities a total of 102 million dollars at the end of 1997 and the highest debts are to the 10 HDUs, which are owed 75 million dollars.

HDUs have a total enrolment of about 100,000 and student fees account for about 21 percent of their annual budgets. If they do not get this money, some may have to close departments while others may be forced to downgrade faculties to departments.

“HDUs continue to account for the largest number of graduates from disadvantaged communities in spite of poor funding,” says Professor Mbulelo Mzamane, Fort Hare’s vice chancellor. “It they collapse it will be a real national tragedy.”

“Our admissions have continued to climb responding to the national need but outstripping our financial resources,” explains Mzamane. “Failure to realise income means failure to improve services.”

Fort Hare, located in what used to be the black homeland of Ciskei, is owed about five million dollars while the University of Zululand is owed the highest amount — 12 million dollars.

“The HDUs have no resources or reserves to write-off debts or provide free university education. The universities cannot function without rigid adherence to arrangements for paying prescribed fees in full,” says a statement issued by the Forum of Vice Chancellors of HDUs, who met at the weekend to discuss the crisis .

In South Africa, universities and technical colleges are autonomous and government only comes in to provide subsidies. HDUs were created under the policy of apartheid to cater for black students and they have a history of poor funding.

When, in 1996, the government announced that it would spend 23 percent more on subsidies to universities and technical colleges, for many institutions it was the first such increase in almost a decade.

In 1996, the state allocated some 46 million dollars to all universities under the Tertiary Education Fund for South Africa (TEFSA), set up to implement a national financial aid and loan scheme.

Of this amount, 31 million dollars was allocated to disadvantaged universities, but that benefitted only 32,550 of the 100,000 students. The rest have been having to find ways to finance their education.

“Tertiary education in South Africa cannot and will not be free in South Africa,” says education spokesman Bheki Khumalo. “As things stand, government cannot afford it.”

Khumalo says the area of greatest need is general education and this is what the government has prioritised.

Over the 1996/97 financial year South Africa’s government allocated 22 percent of the national budget to education, and about 85 percent of the amount went to schools and colleges.

Many of the universities that are owed large debts say they will not re-admit defaulting students nor award them degrees.

Some have resorted to debt-collection agencies, but South African Students Congress President Jacob Mamabolo has warned of protest action should the debt-collectors be unleashed on students. He suggests alternatives such as setting up a fund to redress the problems of black students who are victims of financial exclusion.

However, Khumalo says the government does not consider forgiving student debts an option. “Government can only write-off debts if it raises money in other areas,” he says. “And that is, of course, impossible.”