Students are seeking far more than the status quo, writes Chumani Maxwele.
Alot has been said about last weekend’s aborted National Education Crisis Convention, with fingers wagged at the students for the cancellation of the event.
It is prudent to put things into perspective. It is common knowledge that the student activists of #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall have re-introduced to the national agenda the issue of #FreeEducationInOurLifeTime. The national question of #FreeEducation is neither new, nor owned by today’s contemporary student activists.
It is a well-known historical reality that the call for #FreeEducation has been made in the past by the ruling party-allied student organisations as early as the late 1990s. This call went on to be adopted by the ANCas its election slogan “vote for free education”.
The question now is: is free education its policy position? Does any political party have free education as its policy?
The #RhodesMustFall #FeesMustFall generation, like the generation before it, has re-introduced the call for #FreeEducation. It seems to me we are not too far from this reality.
The March 9, 2015 catalytic political act of questioning Cecil John Rhodes’ statue on UCT’s upper campus re-opened old wounds. This gave birth to a long deferred movement which led to #FeesMustFall student movement.
The #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movement have mobilised power at local and national level. One of the basic tenets of any social movement is to capture the people’s minds. .
This is an achievement. What #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall did was in fact to “rediscover the ordinary” in the age of great indifference from Eurocentric “south” African universities.
It took #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall less than two years to “rediscover the ordinary” and re-introduce the question of #FreeEducation on the national agenda.
Normally, it takes well-established NGOs more than 10 years to do what the student movement has done in less than two years.
It was in 2016, when Wits University called on police to come on campus for what seemed would be a permanent state of police presence, given the resilient revolutionary spirit of student activists. The inability of the university leadership to charm student activists led them into taking the easy route, that of calling the police to campus. Naturally, the “south” African Police Service did what it knows best, which is to show a high level of force with an aim to harm but not to keep the “law and order”. The police in “south” Africa are there to protect the interests of the white elite students, and thus to brutally punish the black poor students.
It was during this fight between black students and black police that black parents and former student leaders during the 1980s came on board to help find a lasting solution; they talked about the black-on-black violence and the interest of protecting white elite staff and students.
Since that day, black parents led by Professor Pitika Ntuli, advocate Dali Mpofu and Bishop Mpumlwana started to get involved. It must be said that many parents have been helping students in many ways, behind closed doors, in their struggle for #FreeEducation in “south” Africa.
The main aim of the parents was to find a lasting solution to what seemed to be a civil war. In many ways, what happened at Wits and UCT between black students and black police or black private security companies gave us a glimpse of what might happen if there is a full-blown civil war.
Late last year, the former Deputy Chief Justice Ntate Moseneke joined what was already
existing support of black parents for the call of #FreeEducation through the South African Council of Churches. During the time when he and others joined, there was already a growing parental involvement in the student struggle and workers’ struggle.
He approached other equally eminent “south” Africans to help him to convene what was to be known as The National Education Crisis Forum, better known as The Forum. The eminent co-convenors of The National Education Crisis Forum include: Bishop Malusi Mpumlwana, Professor Pitika Ntuli, Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, Jabu Mabuza, Sello Hatang, Justice Yvonne Mokgoro, Jay Naidoo, Mary Metcalfe and Santie Botha.
Student activists at the onset questioned the open involvement of these eminent “south” Africans after almost two years of student and workers’ struggles without openly public help.
Other student activists within #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall questioned student leaders who showed a positive welcome of this initiative by the former chief justice.
It was during these times that the warnings of “iizicima mlilo” of the “dangerous Black Middle” and their pacifying and derailing tactics under the banner of “finding lasting solutions” only to push towards the status quo that we seek to fundamentally change.
Within the Western Cape #FeesMustFall movement, student leaders who were positive about the initiative of The National Education Crisis Forum had to listen to these warnings, lest they are seen as collaborators with the forces that do not want to “see change” in our universities and in our society.
The Western Cape #FeesMustFall collective leadership requested a meeting with Ntate Moseneke, and he positively agreed to meet with the student leadership.
It was during that meeting that those who had fears and scepticism about The Forum concerns were laid to rest by the charming passion of the former deputy chief justice.
During the weekend of December 10-11 2016, student leaders met with other stakeholders of The National Education Crisis Forum. It was agreed there would be a National Education Convention and in that gathering almost all #FeesMustFall National representatives were present.
As a result, student leaders somehow agreed on the fundamental issues that collectively needed to be dealt with before The National Convention.
Part of the agreement was that the co-conveners would help to mediate and solve all #FeesMustFall-related challenges that students and workers were facing at the university level. These challenges included #FreeEducation question, #EndOutSourcing question, financial and academic exclusions of students and legal issues that relate to #FreeMustFall protests internal and external.
The aborted event did not come as a surprise for many of us who have been on the ground. It was doomed to fail because the conveners made a mistake of inviting AfriForum and other party-political associates as delegates. Tainting what is essentially an educational issue with party politics would only fuel problems. It’s not the way to go.
* Maxwele is a student activist and community organiser.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.