Tuks SRC candidate represents youth at UN
AfriForum Youth will internationalise the quota system issue when Henrico Barnard, AfriForum Youth Tuks SRC presidential candidate, travels to the United Nations in August to represent the youth there.
The focus of the visit is on creating awareness and not necessarily on gaining sympathy or requesting support. The visit will include debates on racially-based exclusions, as well as on the effect that it has on South Africans. South Africans are subject to more and more quota systems – with the youth carrying the heaviest burden.
The University of Pretoria recently accepted a policy that determines that 60% of all accepted students on campus should be black. This is a thoughtless, drastic policy that will surely lead to exclusion. Universities continuously raise the argument that they strive for an inclusive culture on campuses. The type of policy decision they make, however, shows that this is clearly not the case and that we rather experience blatant discrimination based on race.
The Sunday Tribune recently reported that prospective Indian students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal who were applying to enrol for studies in the medical field had paid officers to classify them as brown people. The reason is that the University’s racially-based quotas are being applied by the medical school. It is worrisome that merits are ignored and that selection is rather based on race.
Communication with university management has reached a point where any comment regarding quotas – or the more general euphemism of “transformation” – falls on death ears.
Students are therefore compelled to think of solutions themselves.
AfriForum Youth is of the opinion that racially-based regulation of opportunities on university campuses tramples the constitutional rights of every student.
Every person deserves a fair place in the sun.
- By Henrico Barnard
