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Student activist Mcebo Dlamini lambasts Wits fee increase

University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) student activist Mcebo Dlamini has lambasted the institution for increasing 2017 tuition fees by 8%.

This comes as the institution on Monday announced an average 8% increase for tuition and residence fees. The fee increment is also applicable for international students.

The only exception is for postgraduate programmes run in the Wits School of Governance‚ where tuition fees will increase by 9.5%. These increases are in line with the recommendations made by the state in September this year.

In September‚ Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande announced that it will be up to universities to decide their own fee increases for the 2017 academic year but suggested the increase not be more than eight percent.

The government will however assist qualifying students to fund the gap between the 2016 fee and the adjusted 2017 fee at their institution.

"We are very disgusted and we are very much flabbergasted by the reaction of the university. It is very annoying because the university knows the position and the status of the black majority of its students‚ that they are failing to afford the fees as it stands‚" said Dlamini.

He was speaking to TMG Digital outside the Great Hall on Tuesday afternoon.

"There was no reason therefore for [Wits] to increase fees the way that they have been increased. As you have seen the unrest at institutions of higher learning since 2015 leading to 2016‚ the bone of contention has been centred around the fee issue and the increment.

"So what logic then is the university using to decide that they must out of everything that has happened… what mechanism have they used to say it is justified for them to undermine everything that has happened to increase the fees‚" said an irate Dlamini.

Wits Council on Monday said it had been left in the lurch by the government‚ which had short-changed it by R54-million.

Wits spokesperson Shirona Patel said the Department of Higher Education and Training had paid the university about R54-million less than the R146-million promised after the #FeesMustFall protests‚ which had prompted President Jacob Zuma to proclaim that no university would increase its fees in 2016.

"This was necessary because the university has to balance its books. If the university does not increase its fees‚ it will become unsustainable." she told TMG Digital.

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