Lusikisiki has a well-built infrastructure known as the Lusikisiki College of Education which was used as a facility of training educators in the mid 1980’s until around 1996/7. The Lusikisiki College of education was purpose built for the purpose of teaching and training educators. This building has residences, lecture halls and offices all suitable for a place of educating. It is unfortunate that this beautiful and well-built infrastructure is dilapidated and rotting away because it is no longer being used for the purpose it was built for.
Concerned Youth Forum (CYF) of Lusikisiki under the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) used this year’s freedom day to march to the Lusikisiki College to forward a memorandum of their dissatisfactions regarding this college.
“We have used this freedom day as a day to express our grievances. We do not feel like this freedom is serving our interests as a result every year our region produces more than 50 000 students who when they go look for schools do not find spaces in institutions of higher learning even when they qualify. These leaners go places like Joburg, Durban, Western Cape and all these faraway places and when they get there they do not have relatives or places to stay. They spend huge amounts of money for travelling when they get there they sleep in the toilets, in the streets at taxi ranks and all these unsafe places. Because institutions do not cater for students before they are accepted and registered in the institution. This then subjects these leaners to crime some get raped in the process. We then decided as the Youth to make a call for college to be turned into a University because we have seen that this campus is big enough to be a University.” Said Mvuyisi Mavathulana Chairperson of the Concerned Youth Forum.
The youth of Lusikisiki joined forces with the EFF and CYF and marched to the dirty Lusikisiki College of Lusikisiki where they walked around the yard carrying garbage bags picking up dirt.
“This campus was operating properly back in the day, and then there was a change and the college was shut down and the students that were here at the time moved to universities such as WSU and UNISA. When the college of education was being shut down back in 1997 it was just closed down without a plan of what will happen to it but it was no longer being used for the fundamental purpose it was built for. It began being used for any other objective like right now we have departments such as SASSA, and now department of labour is also here renting here. Those offices used to be residential units but have since been altered into being office spaces. No if this campus could be turned back into being a university there would be more costs that go into repurpose those offices back into residential units. Same goes to classes. If there was a political will our leaders would have changed or fixed this issue long ago because this can be fixed. Even if they could turn it into an extension of WSU or maybe give it just one department to run” Songezo Mangcotywa, community supporter.
Koko Ndzumo explains why this freedom day was chosen for this protest, “We chose freedom day for this march to demonstrate to the country that we are not yet free because our children do not have access to their basic needs. No access to education means no access to basic needs. Now this college is being renovated and we do not know what will happen to the place after it has been renovated. We are all asking ourselves what will happen afterwards but there are no straight answers. Now as the youth of Lusikisiki all want this college to be turned into a university to that it stops being the ghost it is no.”
