“We don’t have any expectations‚” said Sthembiso Ndlovu‚ secretary-general of the South African Union of Students.
“The budget speech will have to be in line with what the president presented during the State of the Nation Address‚ and the president failed to give us a framework of how to implement free education.
“In all honestly‚ we are not expecting anything and our hopes won’t be high. We are planning now on how to respond to the speech.”
Ndlovu said students believed the government was not taking calls for free‚ quality‚ decolonised education seriously as they didn’t see any plans or frameworks to implement the demands.
Demands for changes to the higher education system have increased since #FeesMustFall protests began in 2015 and disruped a large part of the 2016 academic year.
Kuhlekonke Ntuli‚ SRC president of the Howard College campus at the University of KwaZulu-Natal‚ said the SRC remained clear about its position of allowing all students to register although many were unable to afford fees.
