Student leaders request meeting with Nzimande

I have received a request to meet from those who walked out last week. I should say that last week’s meeting was not a bargaining meeting, I called the students to brief them on matters of higher education, in the course of that meeting, they tabled eight demands which we responded to fully,” Nzimande said at a briefing of the ANC education subcommittee in Johannesburg.

The student leaders, who included Witwatersrand University SRC president Nompendulo Mkhatshwa, University of Fort Hare’s Busisiwe Mashiqa and other leaders from the University of Pretoria and Stellenbosch University walked out of the meeting held in Tembisa on Thursday and vowed to intensify the Fees Must Fall movement.

The students said they walked out because Nzimande would not commit to time lines on how their demands would be met.

Student leaders from some of the other institutions stayed behind in the meeting, an indication of cracks in the protest movement for free education.

Nzimande said a structure, comprising of officials from his department, students and vice chancellors, that was formed to address the students’ demand, had a month to report on its recommendations.

President Jacob Zuma this month appointed a presidential commission of inquiry, led by retired Judge Jonathan Arthur Heher, a former judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal, to look into the question of funding for higher education.