COSATU calls on its members to give support and solidarity to students protesting against fee increases

COSATU welcomes the intervention by the leader of society, the African National Congress {ANC} in the current nationwide students protest against fee increases. The planned meetings between the leadership of the movement and students represent a step in the right direction, and we hope the meetings will deliver concrete proposals and solutions to the problem of tertiary funding.

The federation also condemns the barbaric apartheid tactics deployed by the police to deal with students in parliament and other campuses around the country yesterday. This was an unnecessary use of force and shows that the SAPS have learned nothing from the Marikana tragedy.

We call for the immediate release of all the arrested students and for the National Prosecuting Authority {NPA} to drop all the charges against them. The nation that puts its children to jail for demanding, a promised free education, has no future.

COSATU calls on all its affiliates and members to join the campaign and provide students with the necessary support and solidarity in the nationwide protests. COSATU members are parents and they will not sit and watch their kids being brutalized and arrested by the overzealous police officers.

The students’ protests are about the working class that is tired of the status quo. The protests by the students are a wakeup call to our government and a reminder to government of the Freedom Charter that was paid for in blood. They are also a clear reminder of the damage that the poor education system and neoliberal policies continue to inflict on working class children

Theses marches are not only about fees but they are a clear message and a vote of no confidence against neoliberal policies that have isolated the working class from participating in the economy, commodified basic services and created the huge inequalities in the country.

This campaign is also a reminder that the struggle for social justice, poverty and dispossession can only be won through mass mobilisation and unity.

We reaffirm our support for the student protests and reiterate our call for a moratorium on student increases. We also call on big businesses, who are the biggest beneficiaries of our higher education system to come to the party and participate in finding the solution to the funding of education. They have been mining the skills of South Africans and making fortunes on the back of the labour of the parents of these students. We demand that they invest their fortunes and profits back to the education system. The honeymoon is over and it will no longer be business as usual.

Statement issued by Sizwe Pamla, National Spokesperson, Congress of South African Trade Unions, 22 October 2015