Economic Freedom Fighters president Julius Malema has called for, Sesiyanda Godlimpi, the SRC president at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) to fight for accommodation fit human living, for African students within the institution.
Addressing hundreds of students at the DUT’s Steve Biko Campus on Tuesday, Malema said it must never be that an inequality between black and Indian students exist in an academic institution.
“Fighters in the campus here, we need to fight for proper accommodation, and that accommodation must be conducive for human beings. It must never be that when there is accommodation for Indian students it’s better than the African student. We cannot have that 25 years into democracy. White, Indian and African accommodation must be the same,” he said.
Accommodation at the institution, like many other institutions in the province, is among many other issues which have been the cause of a series of violent protests. During one incident, student Mlungisi Madonsela was shot and killed by university security guards.
Malema’s visit at DUT was part of his week-long to the province ahead of the national elections scheduled for May 8.
He also touched on controversial issue of free education, saying the late former President Nelson Mandela made a mistake in 1994 by prioritising RDP housing.
“The first priority should have been free education. If we had given people free education in 1994, we would not need RDP houses because people would get jobs and build houses of their own,” Malema said.
Malema also said that the party would double its effort to fight for free education.
“After killing one of our own they thought they would destroy the spirit of our students to fight for free education. In the name of Madonsela we are going to double our efforts to fight until we realise the real free education, not the half education, not the fake education,” he said.
On the issue of insourcing, Malema said security guards and cleaners should be insourced and their children must have access to education free of charge.
“We’ll need to know that if you are a child of a police officer, a child of a nurse, a child of nurses and medical practitioners, and cleaners and security guards automatically you don’t have to pay for anything.
“Sometimes we think police get money, sometimes we think nurses get money. Those people are not paid anything, their children must have access to education free of charge,” Malema said.
Malema also condemned recent xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals in the province, an act which he dubbed ‘self-hate’. He was referring to the recent spate of violence in the likes of Burnwood Informal Settlement in Sydenham, uMlazi and Overport, which saw many families being displaced and seeking shelter in nearby community halls.
“Stop the self-hate! Africans are you. The reason you beat them up is that you don’t love yourself. You see your beauty or ugliness in them and therefore you don’t like what you see in the mirror because those people look like you,” Malema said.
Featured image by Lizeka Maduna
