Tshwane University of Technology shut down

JAN 31, 2014 | SAPA 

The Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) was closed until further notice on Thursday because of student protests, the institution said.

"Due to student unrest, the management today resolved to close all the university's campuses with immediate effect until further notice," spokeswoman Willa de Ruyter said in a statement.

"The university once again condemns the violent actions of students who participated in two days of protest action at the university."

Students were protesting against a shortfall in money from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). De Ruyter said protests would not solve the problem and disadvantage students who had already registered.

Protests started on Wednesday, forcing the closure of the six campuses. Student Representative Council (SRC) members met management in an attempt to resolve the issue.

TUT central SRC president Mboniseni Dladla said they asked that students who owed the institution money, as a result of the NSFAS failing to pay, be allowed to register.

"That commitment has been made by management but beyond that, the EMC [executive management council] has further contributed R10 million to students," he said.

De Ruyter confirmed the agreement, and said all financial blocks on students would be removed.

She said the R10 million would come from TUT's budget to help academically deserving and financially needy students.

Earlier in the day, Dladla said a mass protest was being planned for Monday. He said they had given management until Friday to respond to all the issues raised in their memorandum.

"We are talking of a mass protest of 15,000 students. All campuses have agreed to meet on Monday, at the Pretoria West campus, to strike," he said.

"We have given them our memorandum, and if we don't get a commitment by Friday, addressing all our issues, then we are going to protest," he said.

On Thursday, Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande announced that R1 billion would be added to the NSFAS.

"[My] department has made available an additional amount of R1bn, sourced from the National Skills Fund, to all universities to cover the 2013 and 2014 shortfall," he told reporters in Pretoria.

He said the NSFAS had a shortfall of R2.6bn in 2013.

Nzimande called on students not to damage property or disrupt lectures when they protested.

Nzimande's call followed a wave of protests on campuses around the country by students unhappy with the financial situation at tertiary institutions. The minister hoped meetings between his department and affected parties would solve the problem.

"I also wish to strongly condemn any disruptions and destruction of property, and urge all to desist from this," he said.

The minister was concerned, especially by disruptions to lectures. His office would continue to monitor the situation, and help institutions, students, and parents.

He called on universities to treat students with dignity and respect, and to provide the necessary support in dealing with registration and financial help.

"We urge all stakeholders to constructively engage with each other to ensure a smooth registration process. We must not allow the challenges we face to negatively affect the registration process," he said.

Nzimande appealed to students to use strikes and demonstrations as a last resort.

School stabbing captured on video

January 24 2014 at 01:30pm 

By ZAINUL DAWOOD and SIYABULELA DZANIBE

Dramatic cellphone footage of the incident outside Hillview High School, which has gone viral, is being analysed by police.

Durban -

A school pupil has died and another is fighting for his life in hospital after two separate incidents of stabbing in KwaZulu-Natal, just days into the new academic year.

In Umzinto on the South Coast Thobani Philani Shezi, 21, was stabbed by robbers outside Roseville Secondary School, where he was in Grade 12, on Wednesday.

Police said he was killed for his cellphone.

And in Newlands East, a faction or gang fight is believed to have been the cause of a 16-year-old pupil being stabbed outside the Hillview High School gates on Tuesday, allegedly by a 21-year-old man who lives in the same neighbourhood as the teen.

The boy, who was apparently also armed with a knife, was stabbed in the chest as a large group of pupils watched.

He sustained critical injuries – his liver, lungs and spleen have been punctured – and is in ICU.

Dramatic cellphone footage of the incident, which has gone viral on the internet, is being analysed by police.

A man was arrested after the stabbing and was to have appeared in the Newlands West Magistratre’s Court on Thursday to face charges of attempted murder.

The school’s management on Thursday ordered some of its pupils to stay home for their own safety, telling parents in a note that the “ongoing feud” involving residents from different sections of the neighbourhood had spilt over into the school, endangering the lives of teachers and pupils.

A source said the teen and the man lived in nearby roads.

In December, boys from one road walked along the other road where there was an exchange of words that is believed to have led to Tuesday afternoon’s fight.

The Daily News has viewed the 34-second cellphone footage, which shows schoolchildren forming a circle around the two fighters.

The video, presumably recorded by a pupil, starts with a man dressed in shorts and a blue T-shirt and a teen in school uniform, both with knives in their hands, taunting each other.

After the pair size each other up, the man lifts up his hand and swipes his knife at the boy who blocks the strike with his hand.

The man runs forward and takes another swipe at the teen, who pulls back unharmed.

The man then kicks off his flip-flops and swipes at the teen twice. As the teen is back pedalling, he tries to fend off more strikes with his schoolbag but then he runs out of space as he backs into a mini-bus taxi and the circle of schoolchildren.

He swipes back twice with his knife and kicks out at the man, losing a shoe in the process.

The man swipes at him two more times and the boy is seen stopping and clutching his stomach before running away. The man follows, but eventually gives up the chase.

The pupil’s family have refused to comment.

Police spokesman, Captain Thulani Zwane, said the motive for the stabbing was unknown.

On Thursday some Hillview pupils were handed notes to give to their parents and have been advised to stay at home until Monday, when they must return with their parents to school for a meeting.

“The school is appealing to parents to work together with school management in finding a solution to the problem,” the note reads.

The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education condemned the incident and called on the Newlands East community to help resolve the problem of gangs in the area.

“It is always faction fights spilling over at (the) school premises… This is a community problem but the department is willing to intervene,” said spokesman Bhekisisa Mncube.

He said members of the SAPS dog unit had conducted a raid at the school on Wednesday to search for weapons.

“All learners who are involved have been identified and have been suspended pending an engagement with parents and the community,” Mncube said.

“If there are any further issues, the matter will escalate to the department for the MEC to intervene.”

Mncube said police could not hold the suspect indefinitely, but they needed to interview the teen. However, the boy was in the ICU and could not be interviewed, he said.

“We are crossing our fingers for the life of the boy.”

Mncube said the pupil sustained very critical injuries. “He was taken into emergency surgery as soon he got to the hospital. We are very worried about his condition.”

Mncube said police were hoping that publicity around the cellphone footage of the stabbing would lead to more evidence being obtained.

“That piece of that viral video is very critical for the police at this stage,” he said.

“If this guy dies, the case will change from attempted murder to murder.”

Newlands East residents said on Facebook that the police should patrol both inside and outside local schools.

Dez Rey posted that he was surprised that none of the pupils in the crowd tried to stop the fight.

The local DA PR councillor, Shontel Wagner Asbury, said it was sad that at a time when children had more choices and rights than before, they chose to act violently and irresponsibly.

“It is tragic that kids are still walking around with weapons, and worse, they are using them to inflict crimes against one another,” she said.

“The community of Newlands needs to start taking charge and standing together against violent crimes.”

Zwane asked that anyone who witnessed the incident should contact Newlands East detectives at (031) 574 7135.

Zwane said that in the Umzinto stabbing, Shezi was with a group of pupils outside the school fence when they were approached by two men who robbed the victim of his cellphone and stabbed him once in the chest.

The other pupils carried him to the principal’s office and the police and paramedics were called, he said.

“The learner was pronounced dead a short while later. He had sustained an stab wound to the chest.”

Zwane said there were no arrests yet.

Mncube, when told of that incident, said MEC Peggy Nkonyeni would look into it.

“We are shocked and very saddened by the death of a pupil so early in the year,” said Mncube.

zainul.dawood@inl.co.za

siyabulela.dzanibe@inl.co.za

Daily News

Eastern Cape schools still without desks and chairs

VICTORIA JOHN

The Eastern Cape education department has allegedly failed to comply with a court order, leaving thousands of pupils without school desks and chairs.

"While three schools – the original co-applicants – did get furniture, hundreds of thousands of pupils have not," the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), which is representing applicant Centre for Child Law, said in a statement on Tuesday.

This constitutes a violation of pupils' right to a basic education, it said.

"The department did conduct an audit but it is riddled with gross irregularities and excludes hundreds of schools."

The new court application was filed on August 23. It asked the court to declare the provincial department as well as the basic education department in breach of a November court order; and to appoint an independent body to file a revised audit of furniture needs within 90 days. It called for all furniture to be in schools within 90 days of that.

A spanner was thrown in the works, however, when Eastern Cape businessperson Bongile Nkola alleged last week that the department’s latest R30-million school furniture purchase that was made in an attempt to comply with the November court order, was irregular and unlawful, the Daily Dispatch reported on Friday.

Nkola had asked the Eastern Cape High Court in Bhisho on Thursday to interdict any further sale of school furniture by five other suppliers, the Daily Dispatch said.

'Best interests'

"Interdicting the procurement of furniture will certainly not be in the best interests of our clients and we have intervened in that matter to say as much. If there are tender irregularities they should not be fixed by preventing children from getting the furniture they desperately need," said LRC attorney Cameron McConnachie.

The department estimated that at least R300-million is needed to fully comply with the November 29 court order.

The Centre for Child Law and 17 schools obtained a court order on June 6 forcing the department to appoint teachers and pay their salaries by June 30. The LRC asked for a clause to be included, which allowed it to apply to attach the state's assets to cover the debt. The Centre for Child Law made the application in August.

LRC regional director Sarah Sephton said on Tuesday that some of the 13 teachers it represents had still not been appointed or paid. If this were still the case by Friday, the sheriff would start removing state assets to the value of more than R600 000.

Last week, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said the Eastern Cape owes a staggering R596-million in salaries to temporary teachers.

"According to [a parliamentary] reply [to a DA question], as at 30 April 2013, 233 temporary teachers appointed in January 2013 were owed R258.5-million, and 1 217 teachers appointed from April 2013 were owed R337.5-million,” said Michael de Villiers, the DA member of the Eastern Cape national council of provinces.

Sephton said unpaid teachers lives' were "in a deep state of crisis".

Closed the door on schools

"The most fundamental breach of the right to education has come about by the department's repeated failure to deal with the problem of teachers in excess and to appoint teachers to all vacant substantive posts," she said.

"They remain in defiance of a court order from August 2012 in that they have not appointed teachers to all vacant posts and they've left schools with as many as 1 000 learners with no support staff. They've closed the door on schools that are entitled to be reimbursed for money that they spent on teachers that should have been appointed by the state.”

Neither of the departments responded to the Mail & Guardian’s questions.

Read more from Victoria John

Twitter: @Victoria_JohnMG

Dropouts and passes: How far has education really come?

17 JAN 2014 00:00

DAVID MACFARLANE, VICTORIA JOHN

The launch of Blade Nzimande's white paper and the audited data on universities exposes the steady pattern of dropouts, failure and graduation.

ANALYSIS

Between government's release this week of its landmark white paper on post-school education and training, and its orgiastic celebration last week of the 2013 matric results, another document rather more modestly entered the public domain.

Released on Wednesday by the statutorily independent Council on Higher Education, it presented the latest audited data on universities. This showed that about half of all students who enter university drop out before they complete their degrees or diplomas.

This trend is not itself news. But the document's publication the day before Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande launched his white paper in Pretoria usefully reminded us of one lens through which to examine the paper.

This lens is that the patterns of university dropout, failure and graduation have remained essentially the same since data reliable enough to measure them first became available about 14 years ago.

This puts the white paper's subtitle – Building an Expanded, Effective and Integrated System – into especially sharp focus.

Losing 50% of university entrants along the path of their studies points to a system that is neither effective nor expanded (regarding both students' access to it and their success within it), and to one that is also very poorly integrated with the schooling that supplies universities with their students.

Unemployment

Fortunately, this week's white paper acknowledges these realities as unflinchingly as its January 2012 green paper predecessor did.

So, too, with perhaps the most socially dangerous post-school fact of all: that the numbers of 15- to 24-year-olds who are not in employment, education or training (the so-called "neets") soar annually.

Estimated at two million in 1996, Nzimande said on Thursday the current figure is 3.4-million.

This is why "we are not only interested in those who got seven As at school ... A strategy is required to pull [the "neets"] out of the doldrums of poverty and misery."

Fortunately also, therefore, the white paper centralises the 2012 green paper's most innovative proposal for rescuing these marginalised millions: the post-schooling terrain will now acquire "a new type of institution", Nzimande said.

These will be "community colleges" that will enrol youth and adults who either never attended school or dropped out of schooling without a formal qualification. They will be multi-campus institutions that group together different public adult learning centres.

Responding to the chronic lack of resources that has crippled these centres, the new community colleges will be fully equipped with full-time staff (itself an innovation) and "adequate infrastructure", Nzimande said.

Elephant in the room

So far, so good. But the elephant in the white paper's spacious room is basic education: we would not have anything like 3.4-million "neets" if schooling was any better, and nowhere near a 50% dropout rate from universities.

For very much straighter talking, one has to turn (again) to the Council on Higher Education. Its hard-hitting but evidence-based report in August last year concluded there is "no prospect" the schooling sector will be able to produce "in the foreseeable future" the numbers of adequately prepared matriculants that universities (and the country) require.

This alone puts the white paper's ambitious target of expanding university enrolment from 900 000 students now to 1.6-million by 2030 in question.

There is no point in increasing access without also seriously improving success. But how the white paper intends to do that remains as radically unclear as the green paper was.

Read more from Victoria John

Twitter: @Victoria_JohnMG

Zuma's mud schools remark an insult - DA

2014-01-18 05:30

President Jacob Zuma (Picture: GCIS)

Johannesburg - A remark by President Jacob Zuma on mud schools was an insult to children, the DA in the Eastern Cape said on Friday.

DA spokesperson Edmund van Vuuren accused Zuma of saying: "We want to eradicate all mud schools. We are not in a hurry because no one is going to rule but the ANC."

Zuma was speaking on Thursday at the opening of the Ngidini Senior Primary School, Eastern Cape, a former mud school, he said.

"This insensitive utterance is an insult to the hundreds of children who have to endure schooling in under-resourced and unsafe building infrastructures throughout the Eastern Cape," Van Vuuren said.

The party called for the president to apologise.

Presidency spokesperson Mac Maharaj said the report was incorrect.

"I do not want to respond to any political party that relies on inaccurate reports for their statements," Maharaj said.

- SAPA

AND THIS IS WHAT WE CALL AN EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

I am at a total loss for words. What was the 2013 Matric pass rate again?

Matric results: Zuma plays the race card again

Jan 10, 2014 | 8:35 AM |by Contributor

President Jacob Zuma has accused DA leader Helen Zille of having “that old mentality that black people are not intelligent”.

(Photo by Gallo Images / Foto24 / Alet Pretorius)

Old “white mentality”

At the ANC’s 102nd birthday celebrations in Mpumalanga, Zuma was heard talking to the crowds saying, “I heard this white person saying let there be an investigation, they can’t pass like this, and I said to myself, this person still has that old mentality that black people are not intelligent, if they succeed it must be probed.”

According to eNCA, who interpreted the original quote from Zulu, it was a thinly veiled reference to Zille’s request to have the matric exam results audited. 

White South Africans fear success of black matriculants

According to reports, education analyst Graeme Bloch has called on white South Africans to be more supportive of the improvements in matric exam results.

This comes after Zille questioned the large increase in successful matric passes in the Mpumalanga and North West regions of South Africa.

Some white people actively “don’t like the increase in results”, said Bloch. “They don’t like to see the progress, because they don’t like the government succeeding.”