/ 6 February 2006

Unions disrupt KwaZulu-Natal student registration

Student registration came to a halt on Monday when students’ and workers’ unions protested at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), a union official said.

The KwaZulu-Natal chairperson of the South African Students’ Congress (Sasco), Sammy Mashita, said Sasco joined forces with the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) and gathered at all five UKZN campuses to present a list of demands to the UKZN’s executive management committee.

Decreased registration fees for students and higher employee wages were among a list of demands that was presented to the UKZN vice-chancellor Professor Malegapuru William Makgoba and deputy vice-chancellor Professor Hilton Staniland.

”Before the merger, the Westville campus had a minimum registration fee of R2 000. Now UKZN has increased it to R4 000 and this excludes a number of potential students because they do not have such a large sum of money available at one go,” Mashita said.

Sasco included in its demands a revision of student assessments across all faculties and a first- and second-semester fee increase that does not exceed R30 and R20 respectively.

”An audit was done last year by Professor U Africa, which revealed that academic exclusion was racist and oppressive,” Mashita said.

He said the academic system does not account for the intelligence of black students but rather on the students’ ability to speak and understand English.

”We don’t think it’s fair for a student who gains an ‘A’ for maths but an ‘F’ in English to be excluded from the engineering department only because he cannot clearly understand what the lecturer is saying, for example.”

The language barrier needs to be assessed as an option for why the students fail, Mashita said.

”We are negotiating for 40% of the year mark to be a continuous assessment. This still has to be introduced at certain faculties in UKZN so that students are assessed more objectively.”

He said recommendations to the UKZN to provide a mentoring service to those students who cannot interact in the university’s main lecturing language, English, were provided to the senate.

”We produced these findings and ways UKZN could better the pass rate in a survey and they did nothing about it.”

Mashita said that of the seven faculties at UKZN, only the faculty of management studies adopted a plan to lessen ”discrimination against students who could not speak English because they came from a rural area”.

About 1 200 protesters gathered at the library at UKZN’s Pietermaritzburg campus by 11am on Monday to support Sasco’s handing over of its memorandum to Makgoba.

Meanwhile, Nehawu’s Pietermaritzburg chairperson, Lynette Noel, said Nehawu’s demands for an 8% wage increase have still not been met. UKZN employees have been on strike since Friday, after handing in their memorandum to Staniland.

”Management offered us a 4% increase, which is not good enough,” she said.

Noel said other demands are for workers to be consulted on issues that affect their departments before management effects any change.

”For example, if restructuring of a department was to occur, our members want to be consulted before learning that a department will be downsized or upsized.

”We will continue to strike until we get a desirable response.”

She said a meeting to discuss plans for a mass rally of all Nehawu and Sasco members will be held at the UKZN’s Westville campus on Wednesday, irrespective of a response from the university’s executive committee.

”If negotiations turn out successful, then the rally would go on to inform all our members of the decision management has taken.”

No response was received from the university management by mid-Monday. — Sapa