However, he continued: “Other student demands remain outstanding: free tertiary education for poor and working people as the overall goal, and an end to labor casualization and outsourcing for low-paid university workers. Many such workers barely receive $100/month, and with a poverty line of $60/person/month, raising a family on starvation wages is impossible.”

Sparked by tuition hikes of up to 11.5 percent at numerous universities, weeks of student protests have swept at least 18 campuses and shut down the country’s top universities. Many are calling for free education, in a society beset with deep inequities. “The current system continues to exclude most black South Africans and other historically disadvantaged groups,” anthropologist Vito Laterza explained at the blog Africa is a Country.

As thousands rallied Thursday at the ruling ANC’s headquarters in Johannesburg, student leader Mcebo Dlamini declared: “The ANC government will never give us free education. We must take it.” Students’ speeches at the demonstration are captured in the video below.

The protests follow the ongoing Rhodes Must Fall movement of “students and staff members mobilizing for direct action against the reality of institutional racism at the University of Cape Town”—which is working towards the long-term goal of decolonizing higher education. Their demands include the implementation of “a curriculum which critically centers Africa and the subaltern” and the removal of “all statues and plaques on campus celebrating white supremacists.”

According to Bond, the mass protests that brought Friday’s concessions constitute a “boost to anti-austerity activism” that is especially relevant given a series of punishing reforms advocated by Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene.

“A victory has been won but the battle for free quality public education from pre-primary to higher education continues,” Vally said. “The market orientation of higher education remains, and it reproduces and reflects the inequalities of the wider society. This includes privatization, outsourcing, competitiveness, user-fees, racism, patriarchy and managerialism.”

Vally added: “We now have the beginning of a new movement increasingly steeled in struggle.”

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