As elected officers of the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) at the University of Michigan, we stand in solidarity with the students, staff and workers protesting in South Africa, at parliament, universities and institutions of higher education. Until a representative body can be convened, we are not empowered to speak on behalf of GEO or its members. However, given the urgency of the situation in South Africa and the depth of our sentiment, we feel compelled to express our solidarity without delay. We therefore issue this statement on our own behalf.
We have been following the struggles and accomplishments of South African students over the past few weeks, which built upon the Rhodes Must Fall sit-in at the University of Cape Town (UCT) earlier this year and large protests against outsourcing of workers at University of Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg earlier this month. We applaud your success in preventing tuition fee increases for 2016 and support your call for the decolonization of South Africa’s higher education system. We are inspired by your courage, tactics and determination in the face of violent police oppression. Your strikes and occupations sent a powerful message to the government and around the world which could not be ignored. We as graduate workers also admire how you linked the struggles of campus workers, outsourced by university management to highly exploitative companies, to your struggle.
Access to affordable university education is under attack by governments and profit hungry institutions across the world, the effects of which we see at our own university. As governments seek to impose austerity and redirect money away from higher education, they simultaneously continue to implement policies that benefit the wealthy elite. We have seen governments over the last few years increase fees for universities and cut funding. An unsettling number of students in this country, the United States, are deep in debt as a result of student loans. Working class and poor students are excluded from university education and struggle to survive. We have also witnessed the skewed priorities of university managers, who single mindedly pursue university ratings while ignoring the dire needs of their students and communities.
In the face of this crisis, we have also seen heroic struggles waged by student movements against cuts to higher education and the further commodification of education. We commend these efforts, exemplified by your own, which demonstrate the power of students to fight and defeat the neoliberal endeavor to commodify higher education. At the same time, we join your call for dramatic increases in the accessibility of higher education in South Africa and throughout the world.
We have heard disturbing reports from South Africa that in the face of exorbitant tuition, black working class students often have no choice but to sleep in the library. We are also outraged by the use of stun grenades, rubber bullets, and other violence from police and private security companies against protesting students in Johannesburg and Cape Town over the past few days. Both universities and government have the duty to protect students – not to persecute them when they demand justice from the state and its institutions. To the protesters in South Africa, we support your struggle and believe that your battle placing values of solidarity, equality and social justice at the forefront is key to the transformation not simply of higher education, but of the country as a whole.
Yours in solidarity,
The Elected Officers of the Graduate Employees’ Organization, AFT-MI Local 3550, AFL-CIO, at the University of Michigan
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