WE have reached the pinnacle point in this revolution. October 26 marked another monumental branch on South Africa’s timeline towards an inclusive democracy.
The #FMF protest for free, decolonised education was nothing short of awe-inspiring. Cape Town’s city centre was reverberating with historic Struggle songs, littered with placards for change and flooded with students from all walks of life fighting for the opportunity to make South Africa a country in which our children will no longer equate being African to being in a continuous Struggle.
The protests to Parliament remained contained, peaceful and powerful. Until 3pm. The crowd needed to be dispersed, and the only effective tactic was a great dollop of police brutality: rubber bullets were fired, stun grenades were thrown, and tear gas was expelled.
The following day, news reports and social media updates were buzzing with events of police pinning students to the ground, students almost being driven over by police vans, and the solidarity and purpose of the march was lost.
The SAPS and private security involvement in the student protests has been a snowballing debate since the beginning of last year’s demonstrations, and after the grand finale to Wednesday’s events, one questions: between whom is this fight? One no longer sees headlines of engagement between university students and management; it is now images of war zones between students and armoured forces.
Ironically, the call for equal transformation directed at government is being traumatically intervened by our country’s own law protectors, and I fear this is diverting our focus from the basis of these protests to the violence being perpetuated, and is ultimately losing a lot of support from the general public.
Although I know I cannot be sure of who initially instigates the escalation that leads to police brutalisation and, therefore, becoming an annoying issue of "he said, she said", I grew up learning that a man who fights with a gun against a man who fights with his mind is not clever, but is merely exposing his own cowardice.
I would be far more respectful towards the intentions of the police force if it had not been for the United States producing statistics of close to 1 000 people dying at the hands of a police officer in 2016 alone or for previous incidences of racial profiling and sexual harassment on local university campuses by private security, or intimidation towards bystanders by the SAPS, or fellow cadres being arrested without warrants upon request or the fact that I even have a list of reasons.
It has become an international crisis that our alleged protectors are just as corrupt as our alleged leaders, and we as the general public need to start asking ourselves if we are supporting those who are advocating a better future for everyone or those who are trying to suppress their endeavours.
Our government needs to start claiming accountability for the continuous negligence of monetary funds, and produce a plausible and immediate way forward, rather than deflecting paramount decisions back to the universities or allowing police brutality to pose as a diversion from the core issues and perpetuating students as criminalised, "barbaric hooligans".
We as the general public need to be the ones who hold our government responsible and not allow "protesters must stop burning stuff" to be our instinctive response whenever we see violence blazing across social media – literally.
This is a movement that will ultimately benefit everyone (regardless of our skin colour), and we have come too far to let the violence perpetuated by those at whom this cause is targeted distract us from the ideals and goals of the movement itself.
More importantly, we cannot let Blade Nzimande’s #StudentsMustFall campaign be the only campaign that prevails.
● Champ is a social activist