I constantly get invited to Women in Tech events. I’ve sat through a host of debates about getting more women in tech. I’m passionate about the cause. I get it. However, I recently did a talk with Zoe Hawkins from Lazygamer (for Tech4Africa, we spoke about how to market technology to women) and a gent in the audience asked how we get more girls interested in technology. He highlighted a coding/gaming workshop in a local Johannesburg township and how no girls had shown an interest. In fact, very little youth had shown interest period.
The answer I wanted to give him was a passionate plea to try and see the bigger picture. We have grandparents who were not given access to basic education. They were victims of Apartheid and forced into positions of manual labour earning less than minimum wage, ensuring that now, in their retirement they cannot afford to look after themselves. Their own children left school and went hunting for jobs immediately. University wasn’t an option. They had parents to feed. Now they have children, who are looked after by their grandparents while they’re forced to work long hours to try finance the family.
I don’t care what the white middle class likes to convince themselves with, the scars of Apartheid still ravage us.
Currently universities around the country are in states of chaos as students protest against fee hikes. It’s split the population in two. One group of middle class students who’ve moaned vehemently online about the disruptions and another group so desperate to better the circumstances of their families that they’re fighting to stay at University. They’ve reached that horrifying point of desperation where you will resort to violent acts to try get someone to see your point of view and give you something.
I don’t condone violence. I also do not condone hiking fees just before exams so that the majority of the student body will be forced into a life time of debt to try get their degree. Unfortunately, life isn’t all unicorns and rainbows. It isn’t as simple as ”free education for all” (though I wish it was). My friend William Horne (pretty smart dude actually) posted something on Facebook yesterday that resonated strongly with me:
Tensions are high, and rightfully so, with the fees at our tertiary education institutions in South Africa. No one can tell you to stop feeling passionate about it, whichever side of the debate you are on – that is your right. However, simply pausing the emotion for long enough to read this article might add to your arsenal for your arguments – either for or against fee increases.
Knowing the pieces in play in any debate is valuable to both sides. These facts, as posed by a brilliant economist I had the privilege of studying under, are simple and easy to digest. Use them as you may – they can be ammunition for anyone. But ignore them you cannot but to your own detriment. Numbers don’t owe allegiance to any cause.
In my position, the argument posited here resonates well, however uncomfortably. For those who can see its merit but don’t want to accept it, the problem you are facing might be the following:
You can, with much struggle, still actually afford the fees proposed by this argument – and yes, it is unfair. But it could also imply something else – you might finally be in the middle class.
Welcome. Here indentured servitude to debt is the name of the game, and it sucks. Here we too have our masters, but they don’t have varying surnames of Afrikaner heritage – they all have the same one: (something)BANK. To solve THIS problem though, would be even harder than solving the hardship of the millions who still look up to a lifestyle where debt seems better than the alternative they face every day.
The article he refers to can be read here, and I implore you to do that this morning.
We’re not going to get Women in Tech or girls studying STEM subjects if they cannot afford to get through school. Hell, we’re going to see a growing divide between the haves and have nots. Between the kids who now learn on iPads and the kids who don’t actually know if they’ll have running water tomorrow.
So why am I writing this? Because I’ve watched social media for the past 48 hours and cringed at what I’ve seen. I’ve been horrified at the lack of understanding from both sides. I want that to change and the only way to do that is be the change. My friend Meg Pascoe pledged to put money away each month in the hope that in the next few years she could assist someone desperate for an education with their fees.
I have two University degrees and fit comfortably into the “middle class”. I’m grateful for my privilege and I’m also going to use it to help someone else. I’m following Meg’s lead. I encourage you to do the same.
#FeesMustFall
