Something amiss in engagement with student leaders

During the first two weeks of November, South Africa’s Department of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, in collaboration with the South African Union of Students (SAUS) and Polisee Space, a public policy consulting organisation, hosted the Student Leadership Capacity Development workshops for newly elected Student Representative Councils (SRCs) of South Africa’s 26 higher education institutions.

One must commend all involved for this programme, which was last presented in 2017 in collaboration with the Centre for Education Policy Development.

However, as I said during one of the four sessions that I presented, perhaps we should reconsider our approaches to student development and empowerment on the one side, and student engagement on the other.

On several occasions, capacity training and development opportunities have been clouded by serious and urgent, or as student leaders would prefer to say, ‘burning’, perennial issues that student leaders are confronted with on their campuses.

In fact, some of these opportunities for engagement have collapsed, due to student leaders’ deep frustrations with the national department or with university leadership. Below are three ‘critical incidents’ to illustrate the point.

Illustrative example 1

On a cold Saturday morning on 30 June 2018, the then Minister of Higher Education and Training, Dr Naledi Pandor, convened a ministerial Indaba at the University of Johannesburg’s Soweto campus.

The former higher education minister (who now occupies another portfolio) had, at that time, been recently appointed, and arranged the Indaba in order to engage with student leaders, set out the rules of engagement and chart a way forward with respect to issues that her ministry deemed as critical areas of focus.

About an hour into the proceedings – and while the minister was addressing student leaders’ questions – disagreements among the student leaders of different political persuasions led to a physical confrontation and descended into chaos, thereby resulting in the decision to cancel the Indaba.

A golden opportunity for engagement on critical issues affecting the sector in general, and students, in particular, was sadly lost.

Illustrative example 2

On 12-14 August 2021, the SAUS organised a strategic planning workshop which was held at the University of Mpumalanga in South Africa.

Ernest Khosa, the board chairperson of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), and his team were scheduled to give a presentation. NSFAS is the government vehicle to support students financially.

What was supposed to be a one-and-a-half hour’s engagement, took almost three-and-a-half hours.

I return to this example to suggest an alternative way of addressing and dealing with matters of concern, particularly at a systemic level.

Illustrative example 3

The Student Leadership Capacity Development workshops earlier this month, alluded to earlier, were divided into two segments: three-day sessions for inland universities, and three-day sessions for coastal universities.

In the second leg of the programme for the coastal universities that was held in East London in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, the last session on the programme had to be abandoned.

The reason was immense dissatisfaction and frustration of some student leaders upon learning that Buti Manamela, the deputy minister of higher education, science and innovation, was no longer going to be available to engage with the student leaders.

Student leaders had been eagerly anticipating an engagement with the deputy minister (even though they had expressly wanted an engagement with the minister himself, for whom some student leaders uttered some unsavoury words).

They wanted an engagement with a high ranking official of the ministry of higher education, science and innovation, with the aim of raising numerous “burning issues” with the ministry, which were a major source of discontentment among the student leaders.

Something amiss in engagements

The three ‘critical incidents’ alluded to above are indicative of the fact that there is something fundamentally amiss in the manner in which engagements with students unfold, particularly at a systemic level – although there are numerous examples that relate to challenges at individual institutional level.

It is quite incredible, for example, how most universities in South Africa usually have upheavals in the form of student protests at the beginning of the academic year, resulting, more often than not, in the closure of these institutions.

It begs the question: knowing that these institutional upheavals are a yearly occurrence, shouldn’t there be measures put in place to try to address students’ matters of concern more proactively and way ahead of the beginning of the new academic year?

So, to return to the illustrative example 2, in the SAUS strategic planning workshop, I proposed a more systematic approach to dealing with and addressing what were numerous and mostly operational NSFAS challenges faced by student leaders at their institutions.

The proposal entailed sharing with the SAUS national executive members a template that we have developed at the North-West University.

In this template, there are six columns consisting of:

• Student issue of concern;

• Proposed solution (by students);

• Responsible office or department;

• University management response;

• Time frame or expected completion date; and

• Comments or latest update.

My proposal was that the SAUS could tweak the template and provide it to the student leaders of the 26 institutions to populate, submit it to NSFAS to provide written responses; and thereafter organise an engagement with NSFAS to deal with the responses which would have been shared with the SAUS ahead of the engagement.

In this way, the engagement would be used primarily to focus on possible solutions after having afforded NSFAS an opportunity to look into the issues of concern, consider the students’ proposed solutions, and consult with relevant stakeholders, including the department of higher education where required.

Back to the Student Leadership Capacity Development workshops: on day one of the workshop hosted for the inland universities, there was a lengthy discussion that took place following the opening address by the Deputy Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, Buti Manamela.

Basically, this revolved around challenges – for the most part operational – that student leaders were encountering in their institutions where they believed the ministry should intervene.

Despite the fact that the workshops had been organised specifically to empower and capacitate the new SRC members in their leadership journey, the student leaders saw this as an opportunity to raise their issues of concern, given the ‘captive audience’ in the form of the deputy minister.

During my presentation at the workshop for the inland universities, I made a proposal to the department of higher education to consider separating the capacity development workshops from the student engagement sessions with the newly elected SRCs.

My idea was that the department should first organise a three-day session with the newly elected student representative council members, with a view to:

• Creating a platform to develop and agree on rules of engagement for the student leaders’ term of office – and perhaps even develop a social compact that would guide such engagements;

• Sharing with student leaders the department’s broad strategic vision and plan for the post-school, education and training sector in South Africa;

• Allowing student leaders to share their thoughts and ideas with respect to the strategic direction of the department as it pertains to the post-school sector in South Africa;

• Outlining, at a high strategic level, areas that require attention in the short-, medium- and long-term periods; and

• Providing a platform to look into and proactively address urgent and critical challenges afflicting institutions of higher learning – issues which, if not given urgent attention, may develop into crises and result in the destabilisation of individual institutions or the higher education sector in general.

Particularly with respect to the latter objective, a clear programme – together with clear time lines – would need to be developed in order to ensure, inter alia, proper accountability on the side of all the relevant stakeholders.

The above proposal to the department’s organisers of the Student Leadership Capacity Development workshop was made with a view to addressing matters at a systemic level.

Clearly, a lot would still need to be done at the individual institutional level. I mention this because, during one of the workshop sessions, it became apparent that some student leaders were dissatisfied with the nature and kind of engagement that takes place – where this, in fact, does happen – with the university leadership.

In a nutshell, my argument is that, if we are serious about the critical role of the various stakeholders – particularly students – in contributing to the stability and sustainability of our higher education institutions in South Africa, then we should rethink and refine our engagement strategies.

Dr Sibusiso Chalufu is the executive director of student life at the North-West University, South Africa, and the president of the South African Association of Senior Student Affairs Professionals. He has more than 25 years’ experience in higher education, 11 of which have been in senior and executive management.