Meet the faces behind the #FeesMustFall campaign. Sihle Mlambo tracked down some of the men and women who will go down in history as the class of 2015 that challenged inequalities in the new South Africa. Their fight went beyond the call for free education, their struggle broadened and resulted in the scrapping of outsourcing at UCT and Wits
“You can’t win anything with kids,” asserted Alan Hansen to Sir Alex Ferguson’s young Manchester United FC 20 years ago, before they arguably went on to become one of the greatest English football teams ever.
Of course, Hansen was wrong. “Fergie’s Fledgings”, as they became known, went on to win the league, the FA Cup and the European Champions Cup a few years later in a memorable treble.
Fast forward to South Africa, it’s October 2015 – thousands of students being led by their own peers – and a new generation of young women comes to the fore to create scenes unknown to “Brand New South Africa”.
Step-forward Shaeera Kalla and Nompendulo Mkatshwa, the outgoing SRC president at the University of the Witwatersrand and the incoming president respectively, about whom little was known before the historic student protests last month.
Kalla stepped in as SRC president after the firebrand Julius Malema-esque Mcebo Dlamini was axed from the position for allegedly assaulting a lecturer, the same Mcebo had become a national villain for his comments that he “admires Hitler”.
The two young women leaders and their counterparts from Wits, Dlamini and the EFF Student Command’s Vuyani Pambo, have become the symbol of #FeesMustFall with many pictures of the four being circulated on social media.
Who are these young leaders and what informs their politics? Durban
Although Lukhanyo “Bhanda” Mtshingana spent much of the #FeesMustFall protest behind bars – he spent 31 days at Westville for allegedly damaging university property in an earlier student protest that may have given momentum to #FeesMustFall – he remains a favourite among students at Westville campus.
The outgoing Westville campus SRC president hails from uMthatha in the Eastern Cape and is a Masters in Economics student at the university.
At 24, he revisits how his mother lost her job at Telkom in 2002 and he became aware of his consciousness and the need to do more for others. He is also the father of a 3-year-old son.
“So many people don’t like you when you stand up for the rights of other people,” he says.
An ANC member himself, Bhanda arrived at UKZN in 2010 after completing his matric at Zingisa Comprehensive High School in uMthatha in 2008.
“What made me get involved with student politics is that when I arrived at UKZN, I lived in the most horrible residence you can imagine, yet we were all paying the same amount of money as other students in better residences.
“So in June 2010 I decided I wanted to make a difference in the lives of other students and I joined the Progressive Youth Alliance through the South African Students Congress as a normal member.”
From there he quickly became house committee member at his residence, then became treasurer for a sports society movement, before being deployed in the Westville campus SRC as the international marketing officer in 2013/14. He finally got deployed as Westville campus SRC President last year (2014/15).
A quick search of his name on social media shows that he is well liked by his peers that he leads, yet he is not on any social media platform.
“I am very conservative, so I’m not one for social media and those things. I’m still a ghost.
“When the right time comes, I will appear there, but for now I am about the people, and I will never stop fighting for them.”
He expects to complete his Masters next year and does not hide his political ambitions, although he contradicts himself later and speaks of leadership not only being occupied by positions.
“The people decide what position they want to give you, I am old-fashioned in my beliefs – I believe in Chris Hani, that people will choose you for what you do.
“I want to be a leader of society, but to lead I don’t have to lead by position.”
Mtshingana is unashamedly ANC and says he has been politically conscious since his mother, who is unemployed and lives in the Eastern Cape, was retrenched by state parastatal Telkom in 2002 and has not been able to find work since.
“It hurts me that there are people with so much power and so many people with nothing, resources are wasted and I have always been firm in standing for what I believe in.
“Where I am from, people don’t complain, even though they are suffering.
“They just keep quiet and they are scared to say anything.”
When Mtshingana isn’t rallying the troops, he says he likes to play football, which he says he played for the university team and a team called Royal Stars.
Johannesburg
It’s a quiet October morning until the hashtag #WitsFeesMustFall pops up on Twitter, later lending itself to other universities around the country, such as #UCTFeesMustFall, #StelliesFeesMustFall and #RhodesMIPMustFall. Later, under a united front, the official hashtag becomes #FeesMustFall, it’s no longer a Wits issue, nor a UCT issue, it’s a national university fee crisis.
Leading the charge at Wits are Kalla and Mkatshwa. Two young women, leading thousands of students – the pictures are iconic – Wits rector, Professor Adam Habib, is rushed back to Johannesburg, his participation in the Higher Education Summit on Transformation in Durban cut short quickly.
The students are clear in their demands. Central to the issue is a call for a 0% increment and calls to end outsourcing – it’s not just about them, but also about the forgotten, lowly paid workers who service their universities.
We had a chat with Kalla – who describes herself as a “servant of the people” and a student activist – about how she got into the realm of student politics.
“I have always had an interest in social justice. From a young age, I attended protests and kept abreast with politics around the world, starting with the Middle East and in particular the Palestine/Israel conflict.
“Once I came to Wits, I joined the Progressive Youth Alliance, and became more aware of the structural and institutional challenges facing students. This developed my political thinking and fed my hunger for change,” she explains.
Just 22, the Pretoria-born student leader is a Wits BCom graduate with a focus on philosophy, politics and economy. She is currently pursuing her honours in political science at the same university.
When students marched to Luthuli House and called for ANC secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, to “sit down” and “come to the people”, Kalla was one of four student leaders leading the charge.
At the peak of the #FeesMustFall protest that dominated headlines, Kalla tells of how her family were “sceptical” and even came to see firsthand how she was doing.
“My family was very sceptical of my interest in politics, but coming from a Muslim home, given what the Holy Qur’an teaches us, they are completely behind any social justice issue.
“I must emphasise in this response the difference between being a politician and a student activist, I do not see myself as a politician. Through the weeks of planning for #FeesMustFall and my busy year on the SRC, my family grew concerned.
“With the media reporting and many times misrepresenting students, my parents needed to see things for themselves.
“I found them waiting for me at Solomon Mahlangu (Senate) House one evening during the occupation and shutdown, and when they saw the community and environment that students and progressive academics had created, their views on the protests, and my strong involvement in them, changed drastically in our favour,” she said.
Earlier this year, the Wits SRC raised more than R1 million to fund the education of students who could not afford registration. That was memorable, but perhaps the strides made by the #FeesMustFall movement were more historic. There will be no fee increases next year and an undertaking has been made by the university to scrap outsourcing in favour of insourcing, a victory for students, a victory for workers, a loss for labour brokers and contractors.
But with much achieved by Kalla and her peers, her term as student leader ends, so where to now?
“To… go back to being an ordinary student and to join the mass of students on the picket lines to continue the struggle for an end to outsourcing and free education, as I continue saying, this is just the beginning!”
And in the next decade, if much does not change, Kalla says she will be in pickets calling for free and quality education, quality health care for all and emancipation from poverty for all.
“Aluta Continua!”
Note: Attempts were made to interview Mkatshwa without success.
Cape Town
Cape Town’s #FeesMustFall campaign was the least “stage managed”, with the SRC, #RhodesMustFall movement, UCT’s Sasco, the UCT Left Student’s Forum and other student groups working together towards a common goal.
But when the #Treason6 were arrested – a group of students that included leaders of those organisations, including vice-chancellor Max Price’s son, Lian – their faces were unmasked.
Another of the roleplayers, Kgosi Chikane, son of ANC stalwart Reverend Frank Chikane, insists he is “not a leader” and that he was just part of the movement like fellow students.
“It was done purposefully (not to have easily identifiable leaders) so that the focus was on the movement and not on individuals, as it is we have no protocol in terms of who is allowed to talk to the media and who isn’t,” said Chikane jr.
Chikane jr, 24, an honours student in public policy at UCT, has served as SA Students’ Congress (Sasco) chairman twice on campus and was once the SRC vice-president. He says he left student politics as he “can’t stay in student governance forever” and started his own organisation, iNkuluFreeHeid – an organisation that promotes youth, deepening democracy and enhancing social cohesion. He is a member of Sasco and the Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA).
* Another of the student leaders involved in the UCT shutdown and spearheading #FeesMustFall is the Durban-born and bred Sasco UCT chairman, Siyabonga Ntombela.
Matriculating at Menzi High School in uMlazi with six distinctions in 2012, the law and public policy third-year student is driven by social justice and social change. He was the head prefect at high school and also captain of the debating team.
He became a member of the ANC Youth League in 2011 and is also a member of the ANC.
“My drive for social change and justice comes from the place that in 1994 we attained political freedom, but we have no social justice and economic freedom, as young people we must contribute in writing our own scripts because we were not there back then and those that were did what they could at the time,” he said.
His mother died in 2005, leaving him with his twin sister and two aunts at their uMlazi B section home.
“I grew up in Lamontville and uMlazi, both places are filled with poverty, crime and there are little opportunities for people. People are abused by those in power where I am from, you have people being moved to temporary tin houses but they are living there for five years, so I grew up with the understanding that the only power people have is their vote,” he said.
Watching Andries Tatane being brutally attacked and dying at the hands of police also struck a cord in Ntombela’s outlook in life.
“That made me want to join the legal fraternity and fight for the poor, till this day nobody has accounted for his death. It’s like in the townships, rape victims live with the perpetrators,” he said.
Sharing some of the technical secrets behind #FeesMustFall, he reveals that the general student population knew nothing at first until they were barred at entrances and disrupted in lecture halls.
“The shutdown was secret until the day we physically shut down the entrances to UCT,” he said.
“Sasco, Rhodes Must Fall, Pasma (Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania), Queer Revolution, Patriarchy Must Fall and a couple of other movements, we met and planned the shutdown for three days. We sat down and we identified fees and we said: ‘No, this is going to financially exclude so many students’.
“Fees were going to rise from R120 000 to about R140-150 000, so we said: ‘No, we can’t let this happen’. So we put aside our political and ideological differences,” he said.
Although protesters swelled in their thousands eventually, initially it was just 30 students shutting down the university.
“Not a lot of people knew, we prepared placards and messages and we decided to execute the shutdown first, which started at 4am with about just 30 of us.
“We handed out pamphlets to students and we got on to social media, which helped us a lot in getting the message across,” he said.
“The first three hours students were apathetic, telling us to drop this and go to class, but as time went by, more people were joining in shutting entrances, blocking driveways and disrupting classes, with no violence,” he said.
Ntombela harbours no political ambitions “at this point”, doesn’t like movies and music a lot, and sees himself within the public sector effecting policy. He describes himself as a family man with love for elderly people and wants to see the public sector change the lives of people for the better.
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