Graduates Affected by Historical Student Debt

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) commends the University of Pretoria (UP) for launching its Degrees Delivered campaign, a three-year fundraising initiative aimed at raising R50 million to settle historical student debt and ensure that deserving graduates are finally able to access the qualifications they have earned through years of hard work.

This initiative demonstrates a recognition of the devastating impact that historical student debt continues to have on thousands of young South Africans who have successfully completed their studies but remain trapped in unemployment and poverty because universities continue to withhold their degree certificates. No graduate should be denied the opportunity to seek employment, register professionally or pursue further studies simply because they are poor.

The EFF has consistently maintained that historical student debt is one of the greatest barriers to economic participation confronting South Africa’s youth. For this reason, the EFF introduced the Student Debt Relief Bill, which seeks to establish a permanent Student Debt Relief Fund to cancel historical student debt and ensure that students who have completed their qualifications receive their certificates regardless of their financial circumstances.

The University of Pretoria’s campaign reinforces the very principle underpinning the EFF’s legislative intervention, that it is fundamentally unjust to allow financial exclusion to erase years of academic achievement. The campaign is a practical acknowledgement that education should create opportunities, not lifelong punishment for those born into poverty. While we welcome the University’s commitment to raising R50 million to assist qualifying graduates, we must also acknowledge that philanthropic fundraising cannot become the long-term solution to a structural national crisis. Access to higher education and the ability to obtain a qualification should never depend on the generosity of donors. The responsibility to eliminate historical student debt ultimately rests with the democratic state, which has a constitutional obligation to progressively realise the right to further education.

The persistence of historical student debt is the consequence of decades of neoliberal austerity, chronic underfunding of higher education, and the commodification of education. Thousands of graduates across South Africa remain locked out of the economy despite having fulfilled every academic requirement expected of them. This represents not only an injustice to individual graduates but also a loss to the country’s economy, which is deprived of skilled young professionals at a time of record youth unemployment.

The EFF therefore encourages other institutions of higher learning to emulate the University of Pretoria’s initiative by finding immediate ways to assist indebted graduates. However, such initiatives must complement, rather than replace, comprehensive legislative reform and increased public investment in higher education.

We once again call on all stakeholders, including universities, student formations, organised labour, civil society and the broader public, to support the EFF’s Student Debt Relief Bill. South Africa requires a permanent and sustainable solution that guarantees no graduate is ever denied their qualification because of poverty.

The EFF has a significant presence in various provincial legislatures.

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