geoffrey york

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

A deadly stampede at the University of Johannesburg has highlighted the failings of South Africa’s education system, still struggling to overcome the legacy of apartheid.

The stampede, which killed one person and injured at least 22, broke out this morning as thousands of people tried desperately to push through the university’s gates to file entrance applications.

Video from the scene showed a huge crush of people pushing and shoving at the gates, with some scaling fences to enter, while police failed to establish control. Later the ground was strewn with piles of abandoned shoes and clothes, along with the body of a dead woman, reportedly the mother of an applicant.

South Africa’s chronically high unemployment rate, officially 25 per cent but close to 40 per cent when those who have given up on the job market are included, has put a premium on higher education. But the country’s universities have limited space, vastly exceeded by the number of eligible applicants.

Students began queuing at 1 a.m. on Sunday night to submit applications at the University of Johannesburg this week. The queue reached as far as a kilometre at one point.

South Africa’s universities have room for about 150,000 first-year students this year, but about 330,000 eligible students have applied.

The University of Johannesburg, one of the biggest in the country, is among the few universities that allow last-minute applications after the normal application period has ended. But it only has room for 11,000 first-year students, and last year it received 85,000 applications for those positions.

Nearly 18 years after the end of apartheid, South Africa’s education system is still facing chronic shortages of money, resources and staff. Its primary school pupils are ranked 139th in the world in literacy and numeracy, according to government reports. Barely half of its Grade 4 math teachers could correctly answer a simple fraction question from the Grade 6 curriculum, a study found.

Under apartheid, the university system was largely reserved for white people. Per capita spending on education for black children in the 1950s was only 15 per cent of the spending on white children.

Even by the 1980s, less than 10,000 black children scored high enough marks to enter university annually. Since then, the university system has expanded and become racially integrated, but has failed to keep pace with the demand.

The youth league of the ruling African National Congress said it mourned the death of the parent today, and called for urgent action to tackle the “crisis” in universities. “The doors of learning and culture should be opened,” it said in a statement today.

“The ANC government should ensure that no eligible student is excluded from institutions of higher learning, because such will deepen societal ills of unemployment, poverty, starvation, crime and inequalities.”