Student movements such as #RhodesMustFall are a direct challenge to the political and economic status quo, says Simamkele Dlakavu.
Johannesburg - The student movements that we have seen in our country such as #RhodesMustFall are a direct challenge to the political and economic status quo.
They point to the fallacy of the “new” South Africa that we celebrate every Freedom Day. These students have protested, occupied buildings and debated to draw attention to the fact that South Africa today is not so different from the South Africa of 1994, especially at their institutions of higher learning.
This week our country will be bursting with celebrations, to commemorate the moment black South Africans achieved their political emancipation, where for the first time they had a say in who governs them.
For many, April 27 1994 really seemed like a miracle moment. Therefore, accepting that this miracle does not exist and the narrative of the rainbow nation is a direct impediment to real transformation, has been hard to admit. Especially for those political and economic elite that are reproducing the status quo, in which being black continues to be a liability.
After participating in transformation initiatives at Wits University, and during my visits to the #RhodesMustFall movement at Azania House at the University of Cape Town and the Black Student Movement at the institution currently known as Rhodes University, I saw that these students understood that their struggle also lies beyond the university space.
They are aware that they are a part of a wider superstructure and universities reflect the battle of different power dynamics.
As one student at “Rhodes” University affirmed: “We cannot talk about curriculum transformation without talking about the system….let’s change the system.”
Challenging the political status quo
Although all of these movements are non-partisan and no single political party dominates or drives them, these students understand that they are political agents.
At Azania House, before the Rhodes statue had fallen, these students deliberated on the national question, the role of the state and how to respond to it. They were questioning the African National Congress’s role in maintaining the status quo.
While the context we are living in today is slightly different, Nelson Mandela diagnosed the South African problem well in his Rivonia Trial speech from the dock in 1964: “The lack of human dignity experienced by Africans is the direct result of the policy of white supremacy. White supremacy implies black inferiority.”
Instead of challenging white supremacy, these students feel that the current ANC government is “hell bent on massaging capitalism and white supremacy”, in the words of a “Rhodes” student.
A UCT student affirmed these sentiments when he predicted that “we are going to be in direct conflict with the ANC”.
“That’s why we are here, they have allowed this situation to occur”.
Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu remarked on this phenomenon, speaking at the Chris Hani Institute last week. “They [the students] were accusing the ANC of selling out,” she said, describing the atmosphere at UCT as “very hostile” to the ruling party.
What Sisulu fails to grasp is what the students mean when they declare that one “cannot have a critique of the system, without critiquing the state”.
The system which they are referring to are the structures of oppression that interconnect in what American author and activist bell hooks has labelled as “imperialist capitalist white supremacist patriarchy”, a system that the ANC has failed to even attempt to dismantle.
Challenging the economic status quo:
In their attempts to “decolonialise the academy”, these students are also directly challenging South Africa’s lily white economy, which continues to perpetuate our racialised and gendered inequality and allows two white men to “own the same amount of wealth as the bottom half of the population”, according to a recent Oxfam report. One student at “Rhodes” said that in our country “the way transformation is dealt with still does not disrupt whiteness…. social justice is reduced to charity”.
These students are challenging the commodification of education which has facilitated the financial exclusion of black students; they are demanding the end to the outsourcing of workers who are gardeners, cleaners and security guards at these institutions. They are confronting the fact that the curriculum that is taught to commerce students that’s largely preparing them for corporate South Africa is depoliticised, ahistorical and asocial. While giving testimony of her own experience, a “Rhodes” said: “I’ve never learned about apartheid as an economic oppressive system outside of colour….. these things are not available to us because we are not allowed to[understand them]”.
A quest for true freedom:
As “Rhodes” academic, Nomalanga Mkhize, states: “What is important now is how to tackle the system at large, in a more cohesive way because the system reproduces itself. “
bell hooks reminds us that education can be the practice of freedom and now university students in South Africa are demanding their institutions stop being tools of oppression and become tools for liberation.
Thomas Sankara placed a call to Africans to “dare to invent the future”. These students are responding to that call and are presenting an alternative, so that in the years to come, we can celebrate Freedom Day and truly call ourselves “free”.
* Simamkele Dlakavu is a 22-year-old story-teller and social activist. She works as a human rights television producer and has worked on shows for eNCA and the BBC. She holds a BA degree in International Relations and Political Studies and Honours in Political Studies from Wits University.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.