The relevance of the SRC needs to be debated

It is usually around this time of year, when tuition fee increments are announced, that the visibility of student leaders come to the fore and their roles debated. However, the relevance of the SRC is one that students have ambivalently grappled with.

Recently news of the Democratic Alliance's youth wing DASO dominated social media following their resounding SRC election win at the University of Pretoria (Tuks), where they won 10 out 10 seats. However, if Tuks' SRC elections are anything to go by in establishing voting trends among students, the numbers look rather bleak.

Despite Tuks implementing a new electronic voting system, only around 10 000 out of its estimated 62 000 enrolled students voted in this year's elections. Nevertheless, it would be short-sighted to suggest that this means that young people are politically apathetic. The Fees Must Fall (FMF) movement cleared up any misperceptions that young people don't care about their political climate and how it impacts them. Thus far, the only assessment that can be made about the derisive voting gap is students' apathy around administrative structures. This doesn't necessarily translate to apathy where student politics is concerned.

Political analyst, Professor Somadoda Fikeni, says conflating a formal structure of student governance with student politics would be short-sighted. 

''Student governance is mainly administrative as outlined in university statues, where you sit in certain committees and also look after the well-being of students in the broad sense of the word, than the protest politics of the student political formations where they identify specific grievances and run with them," Fikeni says.

Essentially, the election gap shows student are uninterested in the council that represents them at the institution.

It is important to realise that FMF's success was largely outside official student structures. FMF was influenced by the ideas of being ''leaderless'' and unifying the student voice irrespective of positions or different political party formations.

Tuks' outgoing interim deputy chair Thabo Shingange's tenure started in controversial fashion after he was internally elected as a result of SRC elections being disrupted by FMF developments. He admits a debate is needed around the value of SRC leadership. 

''At one time the argument with 'fallists' was that the structure of the SRC regardless of who is in it is problematic, it's not representative and students were rejecting the body. 

''Is the SRC as an institution still relevant? Because during FMF there was an intentional pushing aside of the SRC from student activism,'' he says. 

One can also use the example of the three Wits University SRC members who recently resigned. Wits students were seemingly largely unaware of the changes. This reveals some kind of disjuncture between the student body and those it purports to represent.

''The SRC seems to be some government body that's far removed from students and I don't normally pay attention to government because as long as they don't (directly) affect my life, I'm happy,'' a third-year Wits medical student told me.

Similarly, the Sunday Times published an article about the conspicuous consumption habits of the University of South Africa's (Unisa) 2016/7 SRC, reporting on the "perks'' of being an SRC member. The article probed the lavish lifestyle of Unisa's national SRC members, simultaneously questioning what contributions they've made to their constituency. This comes after revelations of Unisa setting aside a budget of almost R9 million.

As universities gear up for SRC election across the country, important questions need to be asked about the objectives of such a student body. The visibility of the SRC to its constituency seem to be problematic. The fact that most students cannot fully articulate the mandate of their respective SRC's, renders the fancy uniforms worn by student politicians mere fashion statements.