The cycle of Grahamstown life will make a familiar turn this weekend as thousands of students and their families flood into town. It’s wonderful watching the buses, SUVs and shuttles come trundling down the street, packed with students and their luggage.
The cycle of Grahamstown life will make a familiar turn this weekend as thousands of students and their families flood into town. It’s wonderful watching the buses, SUVs and shuttles come trundling down the street, packed with students and their luggage.
As the buses stop, fresh students will pile out to grab their suitcases and wheel them off in search of their new residences. Older students will find their new digs – some of them alone, and some with their families – in a large bakkie towing a trailer full of furniture and sporting equipment.
It is an exciting time in a young person’s life. Most of the arrivals are students who have already been here in Grahamstown in previous years, but for 1 500 of them it will be their first year at Rhodes University. Some of the arriving students will be nervous about being away from home for long periods of time and having to cope with heavy study loads.
Others will be quite happy, anticipating a year of parties and freedom from the discipline of high school and their parents’ homes. In both of the above cases, the students are privileged to be spending time on one of the most comfortable campuses in the country, where they will have access to highly qualified lecturers and well-equipped study facilities.
They deserve these privileges because they have worked hard to get good matric results so that they could gain entry into the university. Rhodes does not accept just anybody. However, it would be useful if these students could spare a thought, and perhaps even some time, to help the thousands of pupils who are attending schools down the road where the teachers refuse to teach.
Pupils in those schools will find it exceedingly difficult to ever attend Rhodes University because they are not being properly prepared to meet the entrance requirements. Teachers are not teaching because the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) is on strike.
Union leaders describe it as a go-slow, because if it were a strike then their members would not be paid. By spending an hour or two in class and then going off to union meetings, Sadtu members are sabotaging the education of a generation of children and still getting paid their full salaries.
It is tragic that so many young people will start off life at a terrible disadvantage because they will not be able to get a good education at an institution such as Rhodes University.
