October 5

October 5

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34615004

These student protests have been the most intense protests South Africa has seen since the apartheid era. But why exactly are the students protesting? Initially, the protests broke out in 2015 as a response to the announcement that tuition fee increases of up to 8% are set to be implemented in the near future. The fee increases disproportionately affect poor and black students who claim the policy is directed at inhibiting them from attending the universities. This facet of the protests makes me think that these protests are about much more than tuition increases; they are about systemic inequality in South Africa’s education system. The Bantu Education act of 1953 was the first law that institutionalized segregation in the South African school system. Much like the effects of Jim Crowe laws in the US, school funding and facilities were separate and not equal. The apartheid government spent one tenth of what they would spend on white schools for black and coloured schools. The Bantu Education act ensured that non-whites would not be fit for skilled labor, and an entire generation of black South Africans has been put at a disadvantage even now after the act has been repealed. The students who are protesting now are the children of those who received an apartheid education and have very low incomes because of it. The effects of apartheid are still being felt through the inequalities in the school system and this has become the foundation of a larger call to address the reality in South Africa that many people thought was in the past.