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South African politics and the local government elections

08 June 2021 | Story Dr Nitha Ramnath

read more Webinar on Gov Election June 2021 Web News-Block

As a public higher-education institution in South Africa with a responsibility to contribute to public discourse, the University of the Free State (UFS) will be presenting the webinar as part of the Free State Literature Festival’s online initiative, VrySpraak-digitaal. The aim of the webinar series is to discuss issues facing South Africa by engaging experts at the university and in South Africa. Some of the topics for 2021 include, among others, reimagining universities for student success; corruption; local elections, the state of business – particularly in the Free State.

In 2020, the webinar series saw the successful participation of leading experts engaging on COVID-19 and the crisis facing the country socially, economically, and politically. This year, in lieu of the Free State Arts Festival, the UFS will present the webinar virtually over a period of five months.

Third webinar presented on 29 June 2021

South African local government has often been the target of protests due to poor service delivery. This either suggests that local government is not capable of carrying out technical tasks, or that constituents are not being heard by the representatives they elected. Without capable and ethical politicians, the best institutions and policies in a country will serve no purpose if they are not protected. Institutions run the risk of being ineffective and not reaching their full potential in an environment without an ethical framework and the required human capabilities. South Africa suffers severe capability deficiencies due to poor political management that requires fixing at a political level.

Will the forthcoming local government elections be the solution to much-needed change OR will electoral reform – a somewhat far-fetched ideal – provide the platform for ultimate change?

Date: Tuesday, 29 June 2021
Topic: South African politics and the local government elections: scene setter for a capable state?
Time: 12:30-14:00
RSVP: Alicia Pienaar, pienaaran1@ufs.ac.za by 26 June 2021

Facilitator:

Prof Francis Petersen
Rector and Vice-Chancellor, UFS

Panellists:

• Dr Ferial Haffajee
Associate Editor
Daily Maverick

• Prof Susan Booysen
Director of Research
Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA)

• Mr Ebrahim Fakir
Director of Programmes
Auwal Socio-Economic Research Institute (ASRI)

• Prof Sethulego Matebesi
Associate Professor and Academic Head of the Department of Sociology
University of the Free State

Bios of speakers:

Dr Ferial Haffajee

Ferial Haffajee is a South African editor and journalist. She is currently associate editor at the Daily Maverick. Previously, Ferial was editor-in-chief at the Mail & Guardian and City Press, where teams working with her won numerous investigative journalism awards. She is a regular analyst and commentator on radio, television, and elsewhere. Ferial is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network and a member of the African Leadership Institute. She serves on the board of the Open Society Programme on Independent Journalism. She has won numerous awards for journalism and for her support of media freedom, including an International Press Freedom Hero award from the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2015 and the Naspers Phil Weber award in 2013 – the global company’s highest internal honour. Previously, Ferial was chairperson of the South African National Editors’ Forum and chairperson of the CNN/MultiChoice African Journalist of the Year Awards. She has served on the boards of the World Editors Forum and the Global Editors Network. She published a best-selling book called What if there were no whites in South Africa, and in 2017 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of the Free State for her journalism.

Prof Susan Booysen

Prof Susan Booysen is a political scientist, author, and analyst of South African politics. She is also Director of Research at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), emeritus professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, and visiting professor at the Wits School of Governance.

Booysen’s third book in her Wits University Press trilogy of research-driven books on the African National Congress of South Africa, Precarious Power: Compliance and discontent under Ramaphosa’s ANC, was published in March 2021. The first two parts of the set were The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power (2011) and Dominance and Decline: The ANC in the Time of Zuma (2015). Precarious Power (http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/precarious-power/) is available from South African bookshops and digitally from online stores such as Amazon’s Kindle Store and Barnes & Noble.

Booysen also edited a range of books on South and Southern African politics. Her latest edited volume for the Mapungubwe Institute is Marriages of Inconvenience: Coalition politics in South Africa (July 2021). Her previous edited books are FeesMustFall: Student Revolt, Decolonisation and Governance in South Africa (WUP, 2016) and Local Elections in South Africa: People, parties, politics (SUN Press, 2012). She co-edited Democracy and Elections in Southern Africa (2009) with Denis Kadima.

Mr Ebrahim Fakir

Ebrahim Fakir is currently Director of Programmes at the Auwal Socio-Economic Research Institute (ASRI). He was awarded the 2014 Ruth First Fellowship at the University of the Witwatersrand and was a part-time lecturer in the WITS School of Governance in 2018. Until October 2016, he was head of the Political Parties and Parliamentary Programme in the Electoral Institute (EISA) [2009-2016], where he edited and published the Election Update focusing on the analysis of SA elections. He was an editorial adviser to the independent start-up media house Daily Vox and regularly contributes analysis, opinion and comment articles to POLITY, the Mail & Guardian, Sunday Times, News 24, and Business Day, among others.

Formerly a senior researcher and analyst in the Centre for Policy Studies in Johannesburg (2003-2009), he worked in both the Pretoria and Cape Town offices of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA – 1998-2003), and also in the Legislation and Oversight Division of the first democratic Parliament of the Republic of South Africa (1996-1998). Before that, he was a tutor in English Literature at the then University of Durban-Westville (1994-1996), writing for the popular press as well as for academic and policy journals on politics, development, and the state.

He read for a degree in English Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he was elected to the Student Representative Council. He was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex (2006) and a Draper Hills Summer Fellow at the Centre on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University in 2011.

Prof Sethulego Matebesi

Sethulego Matebesi is Associate Professor and Academic Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of the Free State. Matebesi’s primary research interest is social movements, community development, and mining-company-community relations. He is particularly interested in understanding the role of trust in community protests at municipal level and the conflict between mining companies and mining communities in South Africa. His recent publications include two monographs – Social licensing and mining in South Africa (2020), and Civil strife against local governance: Dynamics of community protests in South Africa (2017).

News Archive

UFS responds to concerns around high costs of higher education

2015-10-15

Dear Students

UFS responds to concerns around high costs of higher education

There is an understandable and shared concern among students in the country around the high costs of higher education. As you know, this also is a matter of deep concern on our campuses, which the University of the Free State (UFS) has made a priority in discussions with student leaders - and through new strategies to relieve the burden of costs on poor students and their families. In fact, in the past two weeks, the UFS leadership has again engaged students on the matter of fees in the future.

This is what we have done so far. We have maintained our position as one of the universities with the lowest tuition fees in the country. As you would have seen from recent newspaper reports on the cost of a degree at various institutions over the past five years, the UFS has had consistently low fees. This is not an accident; both the University Council and the executive leadership of the UFS is of one mind that we must offer a high quality education at minimum cost to all our students, despite the rising costs of operating a large multi-campus university with 30 000 students. Our commitment to you is to continue to keep those costs to students as low as possible, without compromising on the quality of education.

In addition, we took a decision earlier this year to become the first university to drop application fees for first-year students. We are proud of that achievement, since so many students fall at this first hurdle as they contemplate post-school education and training. We also waived registration fees for postgraduate students and now Research Master’s and PhD students can study tuition free under certain conditions. We raised more than R60 million from the private sector to enable talented students, who do not receive NSFAS funding, to complete their degree studies at the UFS. We set aside some of the university’s own funds to enable even more students to access finance for their studies. And we now have a special office set aside to counsel and assist students to apply for more than one scholarship to support their studies. The university does not follow a policy of maximizing exclusions. It has endeavoured and succeeded to turn around the majority of its potential deregistration cases. During 2015 we had 2 700 students at the risk of being de-registered, but our serious efforts resulted in only over 200 instances of exclusion we could not mitigate. As is the practice for the past few years, these students’ debt for 2015 has been reversed.

But, we do not only look for funds from outside to support our students. Last year we set up a Staff Fund to which ordinary members of the academic and support staff can contribute from their own, and sometimes very modest, salaries to enable Kovsie students to finish their degrees. We have volunteers who work on the No Student Hungry (NSH) Bursary Programme to raise funds for students who cannot afford a regular meal. We have an open line to rural and township schools to nominate poor students with good results for support by the Rector’s Fund, and some of those students are now in their final year of studies. And many of our staff support individual students in their homes and with their families, without being asked to do so. This is what we call the Human Project and it remains central to the way in which we deal with students.

We will of course continue to make representation to government, the private sector, and individuals to increase funding, especially for first-generation students, and for families where more than one student is at university. We will continue to take to the road to raise funds from companies and foundations to finance our students. We will expand on-campus opportunities for limited working hours for students who wish to earn some money to support their studies. As we have said often before, no student who passes all their courses or modules will be turned away simply because they do not have the funds to study.

The UFS discusses and agrees to fee increases with our students well in advance of the next academic year. None of these decisions are taken without the agreement of the student leadership and thus far these engagements, while tough, have always been done in good faith and with the students’ interests at heart.

It is important for you to know that, with the declining government subsidy, in real terms, and the expanding needs of our students, we will not be able to keep the university running without fees - even though this source of revenue comes mainly through scholarships and bursaries. We need to compensate staff, purchase new library books and renew journal subscriptions (which is very difficult given the low value of the Rand), upgrade computers and software, pay rates and taxes, purchase laboratory equipment, pay the water and electricity bills, expand internet services, upgrade campus security, and hire more academics to keep class sizes reasonably small. It is important for you to know that the university has managed to avoid increasing student fees as a result of much higher municipal rates. Our lecturers are not the highest paid in the country and financially we run a tight ship. We consistently achieve unqualified audits and we are known to be one of the universities that manage its NSFAS contributions with great efficiency. We do this because of our commitment to ensure that our students are able to enjoy a high quality of education on a stable campus where there is a deep respect for all campus citizens.

Despite all these efforts, the most important message we wish to communicate, is that the door remains open for continued discussion with student leaders as we continue to find ways of keeping university education open and accessible to all qualifying students. At the same time, the UFS leadership is involved in discussions with government about how to best manage the escalating cost of higher education for our dents.

Thank you for your support and understanding at this time and be assured, once again, of our commitment to students as a matter of priority to the university leadership.

Best regards

Prof Jonathan Jansen
Vice-Chancellor and Rector

University of the Free State
19 October 2015

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