MERGER

FROM : The ex chairperson of PASMA BRANCH and ex chairperson of SRC TUT Soshanguve campus MOAFRICA- RASVUSI

TO : ALL PASMA COMRADES AND THE PEOPLE OF SOUTH AFRICA




Terms of reference





On the 12/09/2009, my brother and cadre of the Pan African Congress, Ex spokesperson of the SRC TNG who is a permanent student political activist of our time. My teacher and guiding master on the philosophy of student politics, Brown Hleketani Vurheni requested me to write a short piece about my observation on merger as one of the disciplined leaders of the students of our time. To be presented to the Pan African Student Movement of Azania on the 18/09/2009.





Taking into consideration the pace of time and events it should be a great honor for me to be awarded with such a huge opportunity to write about this famous topic of our time. I always wanted to write something about this topic but I couldn't figure out any compelling reason for me to do so. There was never anything intrieguing for me to engage my mind and skills on this subject matter. It was as if it was obvious that every person understood merger and its phenomenon. I have been so reluctant to put my hands and brains on this matter until I learned how serious was this matter to my master. I took an unpaid leave of a day, in order to develop my own personal observation about merger. I have attempted to observe the process of merger from the view of the decision makers and those affected also those who are unconcious about the process itself.





MERGER AND ITS PHENOMENON





short note on the philosophical character of merger





Merger itself is a vague and complex concept if it is brought as a plain concept without being broadly defined or understood.





what is merger?





Merger refers to the unification of two or more similar or different institutions to make one united institution based on one mission and vision. merger can take place between public institutions or private institutions. It may happen that meger takes place between a public institution and a private institution or between public institutions only. To be short I think that I have exhausted my explanation of how merger can take place. now let us look at the meaning of this definition, which simply imply that institutions that concludes a marriage of merger enters into the marriage which is obviously in community of property for better or worst till death do them apart.


Once a man and woman becomes married their status change instantly. which under a normal circurmstance force a woman to relocate to a man's home which at times might be seen as if the woman is swallowed by the man. During the process of merger once the other party feels as if he or she is being swallowed by the other there is a high opportunity for the process to go sour.


the disadvantages and advantages must be explicit right from the start. material aspects must be displayed by both parties.





It is very easy to understand merger and its phenomenon if one is having a clue of the rules of engagement. Any kind of merger has its rules of engagement which is regularly raised by the parties involved but legally guided if it relate to a formulation of a legal entity.





What kind of merger are we interested on herein?





This question is a breath taking one, more-especially because the process of merger between a private institution and a private institution cannot be the same as the process of merger between a private entity and a public entity nor that of a public entity and another public entity. The process of merger between private entities is one of confined and smooth to conclude compared to that of merger between public entities with private entities or with other public counter parts entities.


It is always the character of developing a piece on the phenomenological part of any subject matter that the tone turns to sound more philosophical and a slightly complex also demanding for the reader to create logic out of it. But let us begin to understand that merger between private entities only, only board of directors participate during the initiation of the process until the ripening point of the proposal. Merger is concluded without the involvement of the general members of an entity such as employees and clients.


Let us not waste much time on the latter kind of merger, the reason being that merger between private companies doesn't worth philosophizing.





Merger between public and private entity become easier only if it suits the conditions of the public entity, the only thing to be understood is that there is a little internal consulatation process in a private entity compared to a public entity.





Brown Hleketani Vurheni and PASMA are interested in finding my observation on merger between public entities especial public institutions of higher learning in South Africa.





Looking at the kind of public entities aforementioned one should begin to imagine how complex the process can be, considering the process of consultation and its logistical implications. I have physically participated during the process of merger between the public institutions of higher learning and played active roles. let me start by saying that the consultation fee only, can bunkrupt the new envisage entity prior its birth. In this situation all members of the institution must consent. The board of directors, employees and the students. The process of communication play a major role and complicated requirements and rules of engagement are put forward by all participants. All members have a right to accept to merge or not to it is like a movie in the making directed by the government .The main problem is that in our situation here in South Africa merger between institutions of higher learning was not a voluntary choice but a national educational policy. It is the merger of entities which is highly political than a necessity. in this case the national legislature determines the pace and time limits of the engagements. the institutions strives to secure their existence in the already proclaimed legal setup. The institutions struggle to meet the requirements of the educational policy. the government act like a parent who choose a wife or husband for his daughter or son. My observation is that the role of the government's economic system and policy played a major role during the dream of a merger. the well known privitisation policy of the ex president Thabo Mbeki is the basal layer of the whole process. The famous and most sweetest english concepts which gained popularity during this process includes, configuration, down sizing, redeployment and the most ugly one and last in the process was Demography.





My observation is that this process is one of the most unprecedented ruthless, rapid social deformation and degrading process in the history of African revolution. This process is a direct process of the exclusion of the poor from the academic arena. infact, people have misunderstood or ill-conceived comfort for quality. In the sense that the process itself compels both employees and students to relocate to unfavourable areas. the socio economic fibre has been highly eroded by this demographic process.



Racial envy



It has become a culture of our development as blacks I suppose that when ever we speak of racial intergration and transformation, we are speaking of us moving away from our settlements to occupy same same residential area with the whites. infact blacks's view of merger was completely racial than a necessity. This process reduced our level of growth both as black and white nation. It is the same process that sparked a serious racial tension between a white student and black student. Let us improve our settlements and avoid moving into the white people's areas because we are exposing our poor people to an unbearable level of poverty. the cost of living in the white settlements is very high and the socio infrastructure in the black settlements is inconvinient to the white paople. The demographic map is a sweet dream indeed but it is practically draining our people's economic fuel drastically.

Academic exclusion

A lot was observed on this sphere and gross injustice incured, the bigger the infrastructure the greater the comfort and the heavier is the economic burden to maintain the institution. It is truly unthinkable that we can speak of accessing quality education in advantaged areas without having to taste its economic pains.

Merger was not an intellectual necessity but a political excitement

If the government wanted us to access academic resources they could have as well built large community based libraries and scientific laboratories to serve the general good of the nation for example, the new state library in pretoria. restructuring of people of people without restructuring the physical infrastructure in black communities is not a great move but just a mere punishment. It is in a way a long distance educational system with short distance educational characters. Let us take a close range glance at UNISA compared to TUT, if one attempt to make some meaning of the difference it seems so thin. The only difference is that the students are sleeping in Soshanguve campus but attending classes at Rand campus, which makes it more uncomfortable than you can imagine, because the students are exposed to an unnecessary bus fare which under a normal traditional university setup is not necessary. Having to spend a day at Rand campus it means a double expenditure when it comes to logistical aspects of refreshments because the higher you go the prices of food also is sky rocketing.

Excluding racial facts and metropolitan factors

The idea of merger has its own advantages just like any idea. it promote a strong common intellectual meaning and language whilst it expediate the national unity, more especial when it begin to expose other people to the other parts of the country.

Resource visitation routine

The routine of travelling from one campus to another is one big problem which need to be revisited. At least if merger only opened the gates for the students from the disadvantaged universities to have a free flow access into the advantaged universities only if they feel like or when there arise a need to utilize scarce resources. I hope that I still make sense to you. Truly speaking I'm not a good writer and there is a lot that simply deserve a new revolutionary approach to rectify some of the mistakes that we have commited out of political excitement. I truly respect our elders for this dream yet I find it being just a nightmare to our people on the ground. It worth also raising that since we had the existence of merger most of the students dropped out. parents became unable to manage the academic bills and as a result it gave a way for a national educational loan structure to take over. Most of the students continues to misconceive this kind of a loan as a grant or a bursary.

conclusion

Merger is not a good move and it is the commercialisation of education, pure capitalistic in character. It is for you as a reader to go and find out what configuration, down sizing, redeployment and demography means but, we as PASMA comrades during my terms of leadership we always described merger as murder...

As an author I'm like a marathon runner not a sprinter and thus I'm used to writting long stories. I can't write a short story better than this because I'm so used to taking much time to make my point understood because I think that there are still a lot about the good and the bad of merger which need more scientific observation than I have done in such a short space of time.
I also think that all comrades of my time has their own short story to tell about merger and if we combine them maybe we will make the story longer, interesting and more comprehensive than mine only.
Yet I hope and wish that this drop into the ocean will make a difference.

IZWE LETHU!!!

To be continued