Durban - The implementation of Mandarin at schools throughout the country has been ridiculed by the Economic Freedom Fighters Student Command, which claims it is being done to the detriment of African languages.
“It is politically illogical, if not absurd, that the department of Basic Education (primary and high school) is busy advocating for and implementing Mandarin, while efforts are not being made to develop African languages for teaching purposes, research and for scientific innovation,” said EFFSC student leader Mpho Moses Morolane at the second day of the 2015 National Higher Education Summit at the International Convention Centre in Durban.
Morolane was speaking during a debating session on students’ perspectives on higher education transformation.
He said it should “shame this government” that as a “so-called liberation movement” it has failed to institute an education system that liberates people, that respects their dignity and their potential to innovate through improving and systemising African languages and knowledge.
“Does higher education take into consideration that we need to produce knowledge that is relevant to the issues facing South Africa and Africa? The legal and policy framework at South African universities is embedded in capitalists, the academically able and the elites,” he said.
He said that while higher education minister Blade Nzimande’s constructive criticism was acknowledged, the minister had a habit of telling people about how his generation adopted Marxism but when he speaks, he doesn’t take a Marxist approach to education. “There is nothing about this in the white papers,” Morolane said. “There has to be a balance between theory and practice.”
“We must ensure that our curriculum should not be divorced and remote from the context of lived experiences of students and their communities,” he said.
Morolane said universities needed to respect the rights and responsibilities of students and “not resort to structural violence wherein each time they differ in perspective with students, they criminalise students and [student] protests.”
He said that management at seven of the 26 universities in the country had “demonised” EFFSC in 2015 by not allowing the student movement to participate in governance, which meant EFF could not take part in the improvement of democratic ideals, tolerance and diversity of thought.
“[Instead, we] have been subjected to violence where police are called, [and] dogs and security are called to harass [EFF student members],” he said.
Morolane said that instead of universities creating a place for dialogue, they have become sites for censorship, violence, exclusion, and intolerance of political differences.
“This reduces and cuts out the beauty of diversity and contestation of ideas, which universities have been and should be known for,” he said.
Morolane said the relationship between management and students was often reduced to a financial one, where students were treated as “clients or potential criminals”.
He said this led to students being guarded at all times or being seen as “problems” that have to be dealt with, instead of people who need to be trained, developed and empowered “to become positive critical thinkers who can and should be at the centre of transformation and historical changes in their lives.”
“Student access and success should not just be used as campaign fodder for the minister of education to smile and think universities are doing a great job,” he said.
“The minister says he supports the idea of free education but doesn’t tell us how we are going to get free education. There are over 30 countries in the world that have free education, including Botswana and Russia,” he said.
He reiterated the EFF’s stand on an education tax that would see private individuals and corporates being taxed.
“We need to visit countries where education is free, take note of how they accomplish this, and bring the ideas back here,” he said.
ANA
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