The Congress of South African Trade Unions is deeply shocked at the tragic death of a student’s mother at the University of Johannesburg, and the injuries to 17 other people, in a stampede at the university on Tuesday 10 January 2012.

We send our condolences to the family and best wishes to the injured for a full recovery.

It is absolutely intolerable that students and their parents should have to undergo the kind of ordeal which we have witnessed at the UJ this week, just to qualify what should be a basic right – to higher education.

Some prospective students had slept on the pavement waiting for the gates to open. One said that the problem arose from “congestion, because the university put everyone who wanted to renew and the newcomers in the same queue."

COSATU demands that the UJ urgently finds a more humane procedure for dealing with applications to study, and endorses the call by Mangaliso Khonza, national spokesperson of the SA Youth Council that "the university, after its experience of similar situations, should have found better means of dealing with such crises and it's important that we raise this issue across the entirety of the higher education fraternity".

This tragedy highlights a fundamental problem. South Africa desperately needs more qualified and skilled graduates, if we are to transform our economy and bring down the levels of unemployment and poverty. Yet students have to battle to gain admission to universities and then to pay the fees that are demanded.

Last year UJ received 85 000 applications for 11,000 first-year places. The University of the Witwatersrand received 30,000 applications for 5500 spaces, UKZN 61,500 applications for 9000 places and the University of the Free State 13,000 applications for 4000 places.

This means that thousands of young matriculants, particularly those from the poorest families, are missing out on the chance to further their education and make a bigger contribution to society.

COSATU appreciates the excellent work being done by the Minister for Higher Education and Training, Comrade Blade Nzimande, to expand and improve higher and further education, but urges the government to do even more, in line with its policy priorities, to open the doors of learning to all South Africans, in particular the demand in the Freedom Charter that “higher education and technical training shall be opened to all by means of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit.”

Let this tragic loss of a life spur us all on to fulfil that demand for free education and make sure that we never again see such horrifying incidents at our universities.