The poor always get screwed!

Yesterday’s post was semi uplifting, so I think that entitles me to a morning vent.  It has been one of those, pull your hair out/shave your eyeballs/scream non sense kind of weeks in South Africa.  Let me explain why.

As I am sure you have picked up on by 95% of my other posts, township education is a complete joke, so if a learner meets the requirements for university, that means this kid has got it going on!  Like really a dynamic, dedicated individual to rise up over the adversity and all the odds against them!  No proper resources, little preparation, no funding, often hungry, and ZERO teaching. 

So one of the pillars of Masinyusane is seeking out all of the top learners from the location and help them get into college.  A few months back, I was involved with our top learner program, where we went to each of these schools, identified the one, or maybe two student per school who received marks to qualify for registration.  So in the southern location, (about 7 townships with 40 or so schools), there were just over 150 students who met the basic, basic, basic requirements for university.  Like I’m talking if you show up once a week at a rich town school, you would be at a significant advantage to my hood kids.  The poor always get screwed.  Any who, we held a big conference for these students. Cream of the crop!  Probably the top 1% of the location students all together in one room, getting fired up for the future.  Jim worked very hard to get funding from ABSA (a bank) to help cover the costs of aptitude tests; Masinyusane covered the application fees.  I helped fill out hundreds of bureaucratic nonsense just to make our hood kids look as eligible as the rich town kids on paper.

Ok, so holiday came, applications were processed and 53 of our kids got in to NMMU.  Ok cool, those 53 got it made, right! They are in!  And the other kids will go to another college, or try again next year.  We thought we won! WRONG.  All of this leads up to this week’s eyeball shaving.

NSFAS (similar to the American FAFSA) is the national department in charge of allocating loans. NOT GRANTS, LOANS.  People, that means higher than 15% interest rate LOANS! Ok, so NSFAS gets a list of students from the universities of students who qualify for financial assistance.  Then NSFAS deposits money into the university bank account for these students.  BUT this is South Africa, so the money never shows up.  Now last Monday was registration for university, but the students (namely my 53 hood students) can’t register because the government hasn’t pitched. So NSFAS released a statement saying they are busy processing and sorry but my hood kids will have to wait.  School starts next week, and here we are, still waiting.  If the funding doesn’t come through, that means all who don’t qualify don’t come to university.  And it isn’t just NMMU that NSFAS hasn’t pitched to.  It’s a national debacle, only other universities are picketing! Thousands and thousands of kids who should be eligible for an education are left waiting for that phone call, or have been pitched up by the financial office across this country this week.  And here it is, Friday, and still no news.  And the hardest part for us at Masinyusane is there is absolutely nothing we can do.  The poor really do get screwed.

 

I will keep you posted.

 

On a side note, I was speaking to a reader of my blog yesterday and she asked if I am having a terrible experience here.  I was blown away.  I am having the most incredible, life changing time.  I would change absolutely nothing about this opportunity.  She said that according to my blog, she wouldn't get that.  So sorry, readers.  I blog to you about my joys and my frustrations, and sometime the latter is easier to verbalize when doops from NSFAS happen.

 

Life is good.  I'm working hard.  Things will work out, but not without my share of moaning.