ANC former president Jacob Zuma told scores of students at Walter Sisulu University in Mthatha to not just swallow everything they were fed.
He was addressing a free education lecture organised by student organisation Sasco who met his presence with jubilation and struggle songs.
Zuma asked the students: “What is state capture?” and said no leg of the state was captured.
“I get worried if there are things that we can distort and then become a fact when they are in fact not a fact,” said Zuma.
“What is this thing called state capture? We have a commission that is investigating state capture now. My view is that these are politically decorated expressions to achieve something.”
He called on the students to challenge such notions.
Speaking about free education, Zuma said the Freedom Charter did not dwell only on free education but also on compulsory education.
“We must be paying sufficient attention to compulsory education. We should not allow a situation where in South Africa there will be people who are not educated,” he said.
“Those who drew up the Freedom Charter were very wise people because we were deprived of education [during apartheid]. SA is the only country that institutionalised racism. If there was no institutionalised racism there wouldn’t be this situation in education,” he said.
“Education will liberate our country from economic exclusion, poverty and unemployment. We are here to plot advancement of radical economic transformation.”
He said free education would open doors of learning to the poor who struggled to gain entry into the university because their parents were not well off.
“No one with a degree must sit at home. You must go out and create employment. You just never allow this opportunity to be taken away.”
Students promised Zuma that they would fight for compulsory education.
Sasco chair Masixole Sinqonqoloza said: “It is important for the youth to be educated and we thank the former president for recognising that.”..