Since May this year, the South African Union of Students (SAUS) and the University of Cape Town Students' Representative Council (UCT SRC) have been working together to create the South African Charter of Students' Rights and Responsibilities.
The idea is to articulate, in one document, the will of the students of South Africa when it comes to their rights on any issue related to higher education and training. These rights could cover many areas including, but not limited to: admissions, fees, financial assistance, credit articulation, access to technology, cultural and recreational opportunities, quality of teaching, library facilities, co-operative governance and much more.
A legitimate charter has the potential to have considerable weight when lobbying the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) and the different University Councils to ensure that these rights are provided.
The European Student Union, for example, makes use of a 2008 Students' Rights Charter as something that represents the will of students when lobbying for students' rights. In 2007, UNISA published a Students' Charter of Rights and Responsibilities that looks specifically at UNISA. Some other universities have similar documents, but they are specific to those institutions and have not been developed with students from all universities.
Another document relating specifically and exclusively to students' rights that can be found is a Draft South African Student Charter from SAUS, which is neither complete nor dated, nor is the process used to create it clear. Therefore the document currently lacks legitimacy.
Therefore, an opportunity exists to create a document that will throw weight behind student leaders at their institutions as they work for a better tertiary education experience for all.
Not only will the document be useful, but the process will be very beneficial as well. It will draw attention to areas of inequality or unfairness and get students thinking about what should be done to improve their academic lives. It will be a guiding document for student leaders and departments of student affairs across the country when it comes to the will of their students.
The process of creating the document needs to be thorough, inclusive and conducted by students themselves to ensure that the document has complete legitimacy. A two-phase process is currently underway. A drafting and planning conference took place from 13-15 September 2013 in Cape Town. The SAUS National Executive Committee, as well as various SRCs attended. One of the guest speakers was a South African who was instrumental in helping draw up the Freedom Charter, Professor Ben Turok. The second phase is a major conference in June or July 2014 to finalise the charter.
The aims of the planning conference this September include: producing a draft charter based on the documents already available; identifying contentious issues and highlighting them as points of discussion that will need detailed research and presentations from experts at the main conference in 2014; agreeing on procedure for the main conference with regards to breaking deadlocks (for example: Do we only include items that have consensus? Do we vote? Does each delegate have a vote? Does each SRC have a vote? Is the vote weighted by institution size?); and finally, putting in motions plans for a June/July 2014 conference that will see a final document being created.
If the conference can achieve these aims then the likelihood of a future cohort of SRCs and SAUS leadership picking up the baton is very high, especially considering that some of the students at the planning conference will be SRC members for 2014.
A document which clearly articulates the will of the students of South Africa can hold considerable weight with the Department of Higher Education and Training and the different University Councils. It is an exciting project that has the potential to change the landscape of how student leaders ensure that tertiary institutions uphold a certain level of students' rights.
