If UCT shuts down, I’ll have to get a job, says student
Commerce student supports protests but fears for future
Commerce student Nompumelelo Eunice Mtsweni says if the University of Cape Town shuts down for the year she will have to find a job to support herself and her family.
GroundUp wrote about Mtsweni in March, when she described her financial problems as a student on a loan from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme.
She says she supports the protesting students’ call for free education in the long run, but is worried about the immediate future.
As of Friday 30 September she had not been onto the UCT campus since Tuesday 20 September.
“On Wednesday I had planned to go to class again but then the shutdown started and classes were disrupted.”
“It is quite a distance from Mitchells Plain to campus if there’s nothing going on. So I haven’t been there to witness what is really going on on the ground. I keep in touch with friends and on social media.”
“I don’t want to say which side I am on in this whole thing because I am very confused. I hear the complaints of the students and I understand the protests and the struggles that they are mentioning, because I am also going through them.
“But then there’s also the inconvenience that they are causing for everybody else. I want to study, because that will be advantageous for me personally. In the long run, I and everyone else might benefit from this because we might get free education. But in the short term, not really, which is why I am so indecisive,” said Mtsweni.
She said the money from the loans did not cover the expenses of black students. “It’s extremely tough.”
But If the shutdown continues, “that for me would mean that I will have to get a job. I cannot go back home, there is nothing for me in Mpumalanga.”
Mtsweni, whose sister is also studying at UCT, said she did not know “who is who” in the protests.
“I don’t know who is driving this whole thing. I am not part of the protests currently because I do not know what I’ll be getting myself into should I join. I have noticed that most people in these protests are locals and are from around here in Cape Town. I am not from here, and should anything happen, who will be accountable for me? Sometimes I feel as though it is not my place to protest. It’s not that I don’t want to take part, but I just don’t know who I am in this whole equation,” said Mtsweni.
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