[DEBATE] : UKZN: students threatened with exclusion to meet with VC Tuesday

[Richard Pithouse]

>>> "Liv Shange" <204510445 at ukzn.ac.za> 09/29/06 3:24 PM >>>

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
29 September 2006
 
WHO: Students threatened with financial exclusion
WHAT: Meeting with UKZN vice-chancellor Makgoba and other managers to demand registration for all
WHEN: 12h00 Tuesday, October 3, 2006
WHERE: Vice-Chancellor’s board room, Administration Building, Westville campus, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban
 
CONTACT:     Gudani Ramikosi 076 2749756 / Liv Shange 082 4074959 / Thabo Maile        084 3082071
 
Students’ Solidarity Counseling and appeals Committee Press Statement
 
Students threatened with exclusion to confront UKZN vice-chancellor
UKZN students threatened with financial exclusion will meet with Vice-Chancellor M. W. Makgoba to confront him about the hundreds of students that are being excluded simply for being poor and to demand immediate registration for all temporarily registered and excluded students; the unconditional release of all results; a cancellation of the debt and a challenge to the government’s enrolment-cut-down policies.
About 500 students from poor backgrounds have been “temporarily registered” at the Westville campus UKZN for the whole year are now being told to pay-up or leave.*  Some are being told to pay up to R10 000; others have simply been referred to private debt collectors who will not go for any compromise. Students who wrote exams in June, many of whom are still attending lectures etc, are denied access to their results.
-                     Prof. Makgoba has claimed that he is not aware that students are being excluded while his junior managers openly tells us that “money talks, everything else walks” and that students are to blame for their “unsuccessful registrations”, says Liv Shange from the Socialist Student Movement.
-                     For us as students from the working class we’ve got nothing to loose! We need united mass action to defend the right to education, says one of the affected students, who is being excluded with less than one semester left to finish his degree.
University of Durban Westville had counseling- and appeals process which allowed students to register with nil, where necessary. At the head of the merged University of KwaZulu-Natal, Makgoba’s management is in the process of abolishing that process.
- We want to expose Makgoba’s hypocrisy * it is ridiculous to speak about creating a “Premier University of African Scholarship” while excluding mostly black African students because they are poor, says Gudani Ramikosi, chairperson of the Socialist Student Movement on Westville Campus.
We urge the media to break the silence on this issue, come and hear our stories! 
 
*In Westville campus the estimations of the number of excluded students is about 500, we are still trying to obtain further data to be able to present university-wide figures on Tuesday.
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