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Kalamu ya Salaam's information blog

 

October 21, 2015

October 21, 2015

 

 

 

The student uprisings

in South Africa

 

 

by Vito Laterza

 

 

Police firing teargas at protesting students on Parliament grounds. Image Credit: @LionelAdendorf on Twitter

Police firing teargas at protesting students on Parliament grounds. Image Credit: @LionelAdendorf on Twitter

Waves of still ongoing protests (it has morphed from #FeesMustFall to #NationalShutdown) have brought to a halt several universities in South Africa – Wits University, University of Cape Town, Fort Hare, Rhodes and Stellenbosch have all been affected and students from other universities are joining the movement every day. At last count fourteen campuses were closed. (The protesters have now moved to South Africa’s Parliament and at the time of writing had broken through Parliament’s gates, marching with hands up before being shot at with teargas and stun grenades) The issue of student fee increases, and more generally the exorbitant cost of higher education for the average South African, have become the catalyst for the unrest. Demands for racial justice and concerns about economic inequality are coming together in a powerful call for change that cannot be ignored or easily dismissed.

Protesters draw on sustained efforts in recent months to build a national movement committed to transformation of university staff and students, and widening access to higher education. The current system continues to exclude most black South Africans and other historically disadvantaged groups.

On social media, Wits University’s Professor Achille Mbembe, who has written critically as well as publicly engaged with the student movements, has made an important point about the need for protesters to focus their attention not just on universities’ management, but also the state, envisaged as a key locus of decision-making in these crucial areas.

Other questions however seem to be less debated. Are we sure that it is just a matter of channelling demands to the ‘right’ institutional structures? Why would the state be any more effective than university executives in addressing the root causes of the unrest? Government elites’ collusion with big capital and white interests can hardly be disputed. After all, this was the basis of the negotiated transition to a post-apartheid order in the early 1990s.

There is a great potential in these protests, which might or might not be harnessed by the participants. It is the opportunity to bring together people from different sectors of society who feel the brunt of discrimination and disadvantage. On the whole, they have been unable to break through a sophisticated governance system that privileges ‘divide and rule’ tactics, and fosters fragmentation along racial, ethnic and class lines.

Protesters’ requests include the end of outsourcing of all university personnel – cleaning staff is one such example, fetching very low pay under precarious contracts. Outsourced workers have already started to join, showing that a broader convergence of interests is a real possibility. (For example, 3 of the 23 people arrested at UCT on Tuesday where workers. At some point campus security and a bus shuttle service drivers also joined the protests)

This alliance would give university students the role of ‘spokespersons’, articulating demands for racial and economic justice coming from across the country. From informal settlements and townships to disenfranchised rural areas, people have been expressing discontent with their conditions in their own specific ways and contexts, and are calling for change. Their voices remain largely unheard in a national debate dominated by a strong bias towards university-educated citizens – that’s why university protests attract widespread media attention and can have a significant impact on policy-making.

A narrow path focusing on representation in current state structures is certainly desirable as a first step towards systemic change. But it is not enough to address the root problem. The vast majority of South Africans are excluded from meaningful participation in the national economy and society, through a mix of racial and class discrimination that is often covered up under the guise of apparently democratic and inclusive processes.

The student movement can contribute to the formation of grassroots participatory structures that would form the basis of a new dispensation emerging from the ashes of the apartheid system, and its neoliberal post-apartheid successor. The ongoing economic slow-down in the country will increasingly expose the inability of the current state-capital deal to deliver for most people.

It might be time to bring together debates that mainstream media have conveniently kept separate – land reform, public control of the mining sector, and access to and transformation of higher education, to name a few. Ideas about resource nationalism could be easily extended to the realm of higher education. A new agenda for an ‘intellectual’ resource nationalism that brings universities under public control would be one way out of the current impasse.

This cannot however be reduced to top down intervention by a state dominated by the same private interests that hinder transformation and access at the level of universities’ management. Efforts at transforming higher education need to work in parallel with a sustained transformation of state structures. Such a wide-ranging programme of action can only be carried out by a broader social movement that pursues the interests of the excluded majority, and is willing to stand up to the attempts by big capital and the upper-middle classes to keep things as they are.

Neoliberal policies and principles around black economic empowerment have clearly failed to deliver change and cannot be the blueprint for future higher education policies. It is time to rethink the relationship between state and capital, and to reclaim the space for a participatory democracy that puts public control and regulation of markets and services above private interests.

 

>via: http://africasacountry.com/2015/10/the-student-uprisings-in-south-africa-and-wider-political-economic-change/

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October 21, 2015

October 21, 2015

 

 

From The Frontlines

Of South Africa’s

Student Protests

 

by Imraan Christian 

 

students 01 students 02 students 03 students 04 students 05 students 06 students 07 students 08 students 09 students 10 students 11

South Africa's #NationalShutDown on Wednesday, October 21, in Cape Town All (Photos: Imraan Christian)

South Africa’s #NationalShutDown on Wednesday, October 21, in Cape Town (All Photos: Imraan Christian)

Today, what started as a student-led protest of tuition fees at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg last Wednesday, became a nationwide day of mass action in South Africa. Imraan Christian was on the frontlines in Cape Town. Below is his unfiltered account from the #NationalShutDown.

**

Today, students across South Africa held a nationwide shutdown of universities in protest of the 10.8% fee increases proposed for next year. In Cape Town, students from the University of Cape Town, Cape Peninsula University of Technology and University of the Western Cape, along with supporters of the student movement, mobilised and conducted a peaceful protest outside parliament in preparation for Blade Nzimande’s address, which was scheduled for 2pm.

Instead, we were made to wait an hour, then we were met with what I would describe as a military operation conducted by the South African Police Services, taken straight from the days of Apartheid. DIVIDE – INTIMIDATE – BRUTALIZE. In gangs of policeman, they beat our sisters to the ground, trampled their defenseless bodies, threw stun grenades, smoke grenades, pepper spray, and cordoned off the students into smaller groups so that they could fuck us up even more. In order to disperse the crowd, the police, now on motorbikes and armed with guns with rubber bullets, set off on a path of what can only be described as sadistic police brutality.

We are unarmed, intelligent students who understand that if we allow fees to go up by 10%, then in ten years time, fees will be doubled, and blacks will become uneducated cheap labour- once again, fit only for building the palaces of white supremacy.

Blade Nzimande – You will answer for your actions against us. You cannot run. You cannot hide.

South African Police Services – Most of you pigs were black, and you brutalised students who were fighting for the education of your black children. At the end of the day you are a person, so every time you look at your own children, I hope the memory of today haunts you and you go to your grave knowing you are owned by the white devil; in this case- the Devil just happens to be Blade.

To my sisters, you are the leaders of the revolution. I am honoured to have stood by your side today. You are all Lion Queens, you are our future.

To my brothers, the connection of fire is so strong, I can feel it flowing as I type this. I have only true love and respect for each and every one of you.

My heart goes out the the students who were arrested by police and are still being brutalised, please share this message so that we can put pressure on South African Police Services to release them.

I’m not even a student. I graduated from UCT last year. I was at the protest as a journalist for Okayafrica, but because I’m young and black, 4 of you pigs thought it’s appropriate to fuck me up as a gang- and I’ll give it to you, you got me good. But now it’s my turn, and I’m gonna kick you hard in your poes.

TOMMOROW WE OCCUPY BREMNAR, MIDDLE CAMPUS UCT- THIS IS A MASS CALL TO ALL ALLIES TO SHOW SUPPORT.

CHILDREN OF AZANIA, ITS TIME TO RISE.
AMANDLA!

–Imraan Christian

 

>via: http://www.okayafrica.com/news/south-africa-student-protests-imraan-christian-photos/#slide18