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Privatization Plan Shocks Unions Wits
University Occupied! "The South African Students Congress (SASCO), the Postgraduate Students Association (PGA) and the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU) are embarking on direct action to force the Administration of Wits University in Johannesburg to see the folly of its restructuring plan. Dubbed with millenarian whim Wits 2001 - the neo-liberal restructuring plan for the University- disregards the interests of students, workers, and democracy." Lesotho
Mega-Dams: Monuments to Inequality and Corruption "JOHANNESBURG -- The apartheid-era South African government's decision in the mid-1980s to commit R15 billion (US$2.5 billion) of the Johannesburg-Pretoria metropolitan area's future income into two unnecessary, destructive mega-dams -- the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) -- has come under renewed criticism in the wake of corruption revelations." PRESS ALERT:
OCCUPATION AT WITS UNIVERSITY OF VICE CHANCELLOR'S OFFICE
The South African Students Congress (SASCO), the Postgraduate Students Association (PGA) and the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU) are embarking on direct action to force the Administration of Wits University in Johannesburg to see the folly of its restructuring plan. Dubbed with millenarian whim Wits 2001 - the neo-liberal restructuring plan for the University- disregards the interests of students, workers, and democracy. This is exemplified by the planned retrenchment of 620 workers at the end of June 2000, planned evictions of students from residences for non-payment, and the imminent downsizing of the Arts and Education Faculties. The administration of the University has in Wits 2001 abdicated its responsibility to the transformation of higher education and of South Africa broadly, a responsibility it boasts in the mission statement to which it is committed. Its version of transformation will see the doors of learning slammed shut to students who cannot afford the costs of the private, contracted service providers that the University will bring in to replace the 620 workers. It will also see "unprofitable" teaching and research downsized in favor of an orientation of the University towards big business and the rich. Wits 2001 means that Wits will be privatized - instead of being a public sector asset with social responsibilities, it will be a profit-making company that benefits at the expense of research and the working class. This is informed by a neo-liberal agenda that puts profit before people. The Administration claims it has consulted widely and painstakingly in the drafting of Wits 2001. It does not choose to mention that students and workers have in every of these pseudo-consultation sessions voted against the retrenchments and outsourcing, and that our recommendations fell on deaf ears. Vice Chancellor Bundy, Deputy Vice Chancellor Leila Patel and other administrators have forced SASCO, the PGA and NEHAWU to give management no choice but to hear the voices of students and workers. After 4 months of lunch hour picketing, the administration has only proved itself intransigent and arrogant, refusing to reconsider the future it has chosen for the University. Taking direct action, therefore, SASCO and the PGA (not Nehawu) are today taking occupation of Vice Chancellor Bundy's office as part of the campaign to demand: an immediate moratorium on retrenchments and on outsourcing the immediate halt to the restructuring process until students and workers are truly consulted in the third academic quarter of the year, a suspension of the activities of the consultants commissioned to effect restructuring on campus, and a commitment from the University administration not to evict students from residences. Simultaneously, the residents of Men's Residence will be marching from the residence to deliver a memorandum to the Vice Chancellor demanding the halt of restructuring of residences and the guarantee that services to students in-residence are unchanged in the new quarter. The Men's Residence House Committee chairperson was notified that he should be cautioning students who have not paid their fees not to return to University after the July vacation because they will find their rooms locked. The House Committee has correctly tied these effective evictions to the restructuring process and SASCO, the PGA and NEHAWU acts therefore, on the behalf of residence students threatened by the neo-liberal fiscal brutality being implemented by Bundy. The Senate House Concourse has also been appropriated as a space for action. 620 crosses have been stuck to the floor of the Concourse, each representing a job that is threatened. SASCO, the PGA and NEHAWU will not allow this moribund presentiment to be realized.
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