education

Fifteen student leaders are expected to meet to negotiate free education with Wits University management in Solomon House on Thursday morning.

There are strict controls in place at entrances by security and everyone who enters must prove they are a student by presenting their student cards.

There is a heavy police presence with police sniffer dogs and dozens of officers making their rounds on campus.

Wits' Senate says the academic calendar will be extended by two weeks.
 

Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande on Tuesday urged a group of matric students to speak out against the burning of university property.

"I hope you will be a generation that will value our educational property. You must say, as young people,- 'don't destroy our property because we may need it'," he said.

He was speaking at the release of a book which chronicles the history of his alma mater, Georgetown Secondary School in Edendale, Pietermaritzburg, where he was a pupil in the 1970s.

According to Joleen Steyn Kotze, if one tracks South African student activities in 2015, it becomes apparent that a new politics is bubbling below the surface of academic life.

Kotze states that this first emerged with the #RhodesMustFall and #OpenStellenbosch protests, followed more recently by #FeesMustFall, adding that, “The underlying issues driving this movement are about citizenship, belonging, inclusion and exclusion.”

Students at the University of Kwazulu-Natal’s Westville campus have stoned cars and set fire to buildings on campus‚ prompting the institution to announce it was halting lectures.
 
The protests‚ are believed to be related to student fees.
 
The university states that its security staff and police were on the scene to bring the situation under control.
 

Phumla Williams, acting cabinet spokesperson, states that, South Africans are not lying about their qualifications in greater numbers, but rather‚ the private and public sectors should be commended for dealing with fake qualifications.
 
In a statement, Williams assets that, the increase in the number of companies and government departments ensuring the verification of academic and professional qualifications of prospective employees‚ as reported by quality assurance body Umalusi‚ was an indication that South Africa is moving towards clean governance.