Category: Education

{In rural Ghana, bursaries and extra training are helping girls stay in secondary school and shape their futures.}

“Study after study has taught us that there is no tool for development more effective than the education of girls and the empowerment of women,” Kofi Annan, the then UN Secretary General said at a keynote address in 2004.

Thanks to a huge global push, there are now more girls enrolled in primary school than ever before – almost at parity with boys. When it comes to secondary education, however, girls still lag behind. Poverty is a major cause, with many families unable to afford school fees and encouraging girls to marry early.

This film follows Zeinab Andan and Nimatu Yakuba, two young women who have benefitted from a scholarship programme designed to enable girls in Ghana to stay on in school.

Zeinab has now graduated from Tamale Islamic Senior High School in Ghana’s impoverished northern region and is being trained as a youth leader and guide for other students.

Nimatu is in Zeinab’s class and through her story, we see the strain that a life of poverty puts on a young girl. Her sisters are married, but their husbands have no work. All of this has made her ambitious: she wants to succeed and help her family.

Dolores Dickson is the country director for Camfed, the agency providing the bursaries. She explains the many challenges for families of keeping girls in school and the impact this intervention has had. She also talks about the entrepreneurship training they offer to school leavers.

We also meet Ayisha Fuseini, who runs a successful shea butter processing project employing women from her local village and now supplying a range of outlets including The Body Shop.

ALJAZEERA

{ {{JOHANNESBURG — President Jacob G. Zuma agreed on Friday to freeze tuition fees at South Africa’s public universities, yielding to widening protests by students who streamed into the capital, Pretoria, by the thousands and protested outside his office.}} }

In a short televised statement, Mr. Zuma said he had made the decision after meeting with student leaders and top university administrators, but did not elaborate on his thinking. “Government understands the difficulty faced by students from poor households and urges all affected to allow the process to unfold to find long-term solutions in order to ensure access to education by all students,” he said.

In the largest protest organized by university students this year, thousands from campuses across the country rallied Friday at the Union Buildings, the seat of power in South Africa, chanting and holding signs demanding a freeze on tuition and criticizing Mr. Zuma’s administration.

Most students protested peacefully. But some started fires and tore parts of a fence around the Union Buildings, hurling rocks at riot police officers and demanding that Mr. Zuma address them directly. The police responded by firing stun grenades and using a water cannon to disperse the crowds, and unfurled barbed wire to prevent protesters from moving inside.

Students celebrated outside the Union Buildings as they learned about the tuition freeze.

“I’m so excited,” said Nonsikelelo Nako, 24, a student from the University of South Africa who participated in the march. “We’ve been crying for this. Our struggle at the end of the day became a new freedom for us.”

Protests have erupted across many of South Africa’s public universities this year, with anger focusing on the deep-rooted economic and racial cleavages remaining a generation after the end of apartheid.

But in recent days, the protests have spread outside the campuses, as students have leveled their ire directly at the government. Students and police officers clashed outside the Parliament building in Cape Town, and students marched on Wednesday to the headquarters here of the African National Congress, the liberation movement that has governed the country since the end of apartheid in 1994.

Ramabina Mahapa, 23, president of the University of Cape Town’s student government, said he and others had initially taken their demands about freezing fees to university administrators.

“We wanted them to put pressure on government,” said Mr. Mahapa before he was scheduled to join a student delegation to meet Mr. Zuma. “Then we quickly realized that their hands were tied and that in fact they were to a certain extent sympathetic towards us. Then our efforts changed and were now directed towards government.”

Clashes between the police and some students continued even after Mr. Zuma made his announcement, suggesting lingering anger at the government. The protest in the last few days widened to include students who had not participated in previous demonstrations.

Thando Khumalo, 25, a communications major at the University of Johannesburg, said she first became involved on Wednesday. Ms. Khumalo said she grew angry last week as discussions over the tuition increases were going nowhere. Her parents, who work as teachers, have paid her fees but would struggle to put her younger brother through college, she said.

“That’s when I realized we’re bring robbed here,” Ms. Kkumalo said after fleeing from the police’s stun guns and water cannon. “That’s when I realized I needed to be part of this.

“People are struggling to pay for higher education in South Africa,” she added. “It’s become a commodity where only the elites are able to access something that’s able to move us from — let’s say if you come from the middle class — move you up higher so that you can do well for your family.”

Referring to the post-apartheid nation of opportunity and equality that the African National Congress had pledged to create, she said, “Why are we still struggling after we were promised so much in 1994?”

Though many South African blacks share deep dissatisfaction with the governing party, there have been few signs so far that the student protests are drawing wide, active support. Unions have expressed solidarity but have yet to offer assistance. Neither have the students received support yet from the vast majority of poor blacks who remain the A.N.C.’s backbone of support.

The A.N.C. and the country’s two main opposition parties have tried to jump onto the protest movement. But students firmly rejected the overtures.

After meeting with students on Wednesday, Gwede Mantashe, the group’s secretary general, urged party members to join the march in Pretoria on Thursday. “It should not be seen as a march that is against the A.N.C.,” Mr. Mantashe said.

But because the organization has nearly single-handedly shaped post-apartheid South Africa, the march on Friday and the yearlong campus protests have amounted to an indictment of it. The A.N.C., especially under Mr. Zuma, has come to be seen as a corrupt political machine more interested in enriching its members than in lifting up the poor blacks who supported it before and after apartheid.

Though the party’s national standing remains unchallenged, its support has been declining. Party leaders have publicly expressed fears that the A.N.C. might suffer significant losses in next year’s elections in metropolitan areas, home to the kind of educated, middle-class blacks that have been leaving the party.

Universities, which say they are underfunded by the government, had proposed significant increases. The University of the Witwatersrand, a flash point of the demonstrations, had planned a 10.5 percent increase in tuition for next year. In 2015, tuition at the university ranged from $2,400 to $3,500 for a full year at the undergraduate level.

Early this week, Blade Nzimande, the minister of higher education, offered to cap increases for 2016 at 6 percent. But students insisted on no increase.

The New York Times

{{Twenty-nine South Africans have been charged with public violence amid the biggest student protests to hit the country since apartheid ended in 1994.{}}}

Police again fired stun grenades to disperse students in Cape Town, a day after protesters stormed the parliamentary complex.

Thousands also descended on the governing party’s headquarters in the main city, Johannesburg.

The students are angry with a proposed increase in tuition fees.

Africa Live: BBC news updates

The demonstrations began last week at Johannesburg’s prestigious University of the Witwatersrand, and have since spread to at least 10 universities, forcing the closure of many of them.

On at least two occasions, police foiled attempts by the protesters to reach the headquarters of the governing African National Congress (ANC), pushing them back to their campuses. But the students regrouped and finally reached the building, named Luthuli House after South Africa’s first Nobel Peace Prize laureate Albert Luthuli.

The students sang and chanted anti-apartheid songs, invoking memories of the decades-long campaign which led to the overthrow of the apartheid regime in 1994.

The ANC pulled out its election truck and seemed to be wiring a loud speaker, but the students refused to let the party’s secretary-general Gwede Mantashe address them.
Instead, they gave him a memorandum outlining their demands.

“The honeymoon of 1994 – when we were told that we were free – is over,” a student leader said in his address to the protesters.

Students said they would march on Friday to government buildings in the capital, Pretoria, to coincide with President Jacob Zuma’s plan to meet protest leaders to discuss their grievances.

The mainly black students say they cannot afford fee increases and have rejected a government offer to cap increases at 6%, down from the 10% to 12% proposed by the management of universities.

The 29 people who appeared in court in Cape Town were not asked to plead.
The accused have been released from police custody, and the case postponed to February.

Those charged include the 63-year-old parent of a student at the University of Cape Town, the privately owned News24 site reports.

It published what was purportedly an official document, showing “high treason” was among the alleged offences for which he had been detained. However, the charge was not mentioned in court.

Correspondents say the protests show growing disillusionment with the ANC, which took power after minority rule ended in 1994, over high levels of poverty, unemployment and corruption in government.

Many black students say they come from poor families, and fee increases will rob them of the opportunity to continue studying.

Financially better-off white students have joined the protest, mainly to show solidarity with the black students.

In a statement, Mr Zuma said: “It is important that we work together to find solutions. Nobody disagrees with the message that students from poor households are facing financial difficulties and possible exclusion.”

Correspondents say his intervention shows how seriously he is taking the protests.
Students are also demanding the resignation of Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande, who said on Monday that the protests were not a national crisis.

BBC

{{At least one student injured and several detained after Cape Town protest over proposed fees rise during budget {speech}}}

Riot police in South Africa have fired teargas and stun grenades at hundreds of students who stormed the parliament precinct in Cape Town in protest at a proposed increase in university fees.

Police repeatedly attempted to disperse the students from the steps of the national assembly, with limited success, as the protesters tried to stage a sit-in to disrupt a mid-term budget speech being delivered by the finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene. At least one student was injured, and several students have been detained.

“We were pushed back by police with force. The stun grenade was shot right next to my ear. I still have the buzzing in my ear,” said Motheo Lengoasa, a student at the University of Cape Town, as others chanted and sang songs demanding the fees be reduced.

Earlier students lay prostate on the ground in front of the entrance to the assembly building where Nene was speaking.

“This looks like 1976 all over again,” Lengoasa said, referring to the Soweto uprising where police killed at least 69 students who were protesting against plans to teach them in Afrikaans.

Many of South Africa’s universities have been hit by protests, some of them violent, by students demanding that the increase in tuition fees by as much as 11% be scrapped. Protests have taken place across the country, including in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Potchefstroom and Grahamstown.

The demonstrations began last week at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg. Critics say the fee increase will further disadvantage black students, who are already relatively underrepresented.

The protesters have rejected a proposal from some student leaders, university dons and the higher education minister, Blade Nzimande, to cap fee increases at 6% for 2016, just above inflation.

University bosses said the increases were needed to maintain standards, and called on the government to find the extra funding.

As chaos erupted around the parliament building, Nene, standing calmly at the podium inside the chamber, continued to read his speech, in which he outlined the gloomy outlook for Africa’s most advanced economy. He criticised the protests, but said efforts were being made to find solutions.

“We have been reminded this past week of the challenges of financing the expansion of further education and university opportunities,” he said. “It needs to be said that disruption of learning is not constructive, neither is disruption of parliament, but minister Nzimande has rightly indicated the need to strengthen student financing further, and to find solutions where the current situation is inadequate, and government is seized with this matter.”

The president, Jacob Zuma, who wore a stony expression through Nene’s speech, has not commented on the protests.

MPs belonging to the opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) were ejected after they tried to prevent Nene from delivering his budget speech, which was delayed by an hour. After the speech, other MPs were advised to remain in their offices until security had been restored in parliament.

At parliament, students demanded to be addressed by Nzimande, who is also the head of the South African Communist party.

Eventually, Nzimande agreed, speaking through a loudspeaker from behind a security fence, but his words were inaudible above the booing.

University fees currently vary between institutions. In Johannesburg, Wits student leader Mcebo Dlamini told the Guardian that students – and especially black students – face a struggle to enter university, and do not have the money to pay for fee rises.

He said: “The reality of the matter is that in the country post-independence the black students have still been oppressed, we’re still marginalised, we struggle to get into universities … But we still get those distinctions and compete with those model C schools, the former apartheid schools.

“Now we are here, government and the universities are sidelining us,” he added, leading a 1,000-strong march through the city centre. “We are poor … We are calling for free education in our lifetime. Germany did it – we can do it.”

The Guardian

{{Police have arrested more than 20 students at a leading South African university, the public broadcaster reports, as protests against a proposed rise in tuition fees spread.{}}}

The arrests came after students defied a court order obtained by the University of Cape Town (UCT), declaring their action unlawful.

The protests have spread to at least six universities.

It is the biggest action by students since apartheid ended in 1994.

The students, most of whom are black, say they cannot afford a proposed rise in tuition fees of between 10% and 12%, roughly twice the rate of annual inflation.

They also say it amounts to discrimination in a country where the average income of black families is far less than that of white families.

The demonstrators include medical students marching with stethoscopes around their necks, and singing freedom songs which inspired people to fight the former apartheid regime.

The protest started at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg last week, before spreading to UCT, Rhodes, Stellenbosch, Fort Hare and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.

Some of them have been forced to shut down, as students burnt barricades and stormed buildings.

At UCT, police fired stun grenades to disperse protesters who defied a court order preventing the disruption of lectures, the public broadcaster, SABC reports.

The protest at Wits university has continued, despite its management agreeing to suspend the increase in fees until talks place.

Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande is now meeting university officials to find a solution.

Universities should show “greater caution and sensitivity” when setting fees in order to “minimise the detrimental impact on poor students”, he said on Monday.