By Thando Sipuye
The #FeesMustFall
movement, with its call for ‘Free De-colonial Education’, is portrayed as
senseless hooliganism, and thus perceived as a potential threat, not only to
universities and education in South Africa, but also, a threat to the State
itself.
The ANC government
understands that #FeesMustFall is loaded with revolutionary potential, and
deals with the students as any neo-colonialist regime responds to perceived
threat to its legitimacy.
Aware of historical
revolutions, especially in the Afrikan continent, the government locates
#FeesMustFall within the ambit of treason, mutiny, and hallucinatory
imaginations of third-force conspiracies and allegations.
All socio-economic and
political revolutions in the process of history-making are led and championed
by young people – including young students who face and understand their
contemporary struggles and oppressions through personal study of revolutionary
literature, as well as their own individual personal experiences.
Black youth and students
have always ushered in new ideas, new dispensations and revolutions throughout
world history.
Most of the traditional
Afrikan liberation movements and the guerrilla armies that waged wars against
the white supremacist colonialist regimes in Afrika were largely composed of
young Black people and students who sacrificed their lives for the ideas of
freedom they believed in.
After independence in
many Afrikan States, young people and students were, once again, jointly at the
forefront of agitation, protest and revolts against the new neo-colonial
regimes who continued to function as appendages of their former white
oppressors.
Besides continuing to
function as extensions of white supremacy, the new neo-colonial regimes were
administrated by former liberation fighters, mostly men, who became arrogant,
power-hungry elites - shutting their ears to cries and aspirations of the
people.
In the former French
colonies of Algeria and Tunisia the student movements continued with radical
and militant action following the violent repression of the revolutionary
movements between 1947 and 1950, years of bloody massacres, violent riots,
political assassinations and incarcerations.
In Cote d’Ivorie (Ivory
Coast), the young graduates returning home from French universities formed
youth wing branches of their movement all over the country and began to attack
the government’s economic policies as being conservative, accusing president
Houphouet-Boigny of being a puppet of French neo-colonial and business
interests.
This student action in
Cote d’Ivorie and rumours of anti-government conspiracies resulted in the State
building up a 6000-strong and well-armed militia to guard against a civil or
student uprising or an army coup. In this violent way, Houphouet-Boigny
contained the student protest of 1968.
Again in Cote d’Ivorie,
the youth and students were at the centre of the conflict and crisis that
gripped the country after October 2010 national elections. University spaces
became sites and spaces of struggle as tension increased between pro-Gbagbo and
pro-Outtara supporters.
Here, a number of
universities, such as those in the cities of Abijan, Daloa and Korhogo, were
forced to shut down indefinitely, while others were transformed into extemporized
military training zones and camps.
In Kenya, student
protest action began before Kenya even became an independent nation, in 1961,
when students protested against being addressed by a white colonial officer.
And again in 1965, when the USA bombed villages in Uganda, Kenyan students took
to the streets with riots and protests which were characterised as ‘violent’.
These protests continued
right through the 1970’s to the 1980’s against the British hangings of Afrikan
people in the then Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Kenyan government’s banning of Oginga
Odianga from addressing students and the mysterious deaths of prominent
political leaders, Josiah Mwangi Kariuki and Robert Ouko.
In Senegal, throughout
most of the 1970’s and 1980’s the University of Dakar earned the reputation of
being a hotbed of revolutionary politics due to student agitation, acute revolutionary
articulation and protests.
In Uganda, students at
Makerere University were largely influenced by anti-colonial and Pan-Afrikanist
revolutions taking place on the continent in the 1960’s. The same Makerere
University students eventually planned the initial rebellion that finally led
to the ousting of Idi Amin.
In Ethiopia, it was the
political actions and relentless campaigns of the Ethiopian student movement
which led to the coup and overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1975. It was
the students that revolted and rendered Universities ungovernable who cultivated
an atmosphere and ground for the takeover of State power by the armed forces
(Dergue) led by Mengistu Haile Miriam.
The same Ethiopian
student movement, as well as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party, later
led the revolution against Mengistu’s ruthless and repressive Dergue regime
military junta, resulting in the takeover by the Ethiopian People’s
Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in May 1991.
In South Africa, after
the banning of the ANC and the PAC in 1960, the young students formed the South
African Student Origination (SASO) in 1968 which developed and advanced the
philosophy of Black Consciousness.
It was most of these
‘nameless’ and ‘unknown’ Black youth and students that eventually brought
apartheid to a standstill, through protests, stay-aways and boycotts, causing
numerous states of emergencies in ghettos throughout the country in the 70’s
and 80’s.
Many of them were
detained, imprisoned, banned, kidnapped, tortured and killed. They were
regarded as criminals, terrorists and inciters by the white supremacist
apartheid State. Many fled to exile and never returned. Some died at home.
More recently, young
people and students were central in leading radical protests that shaped and
led to both the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions (Arab Spring) that resulted
in the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi and President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
in 2011.
In all the above stated
cases, governments hounded up student and youth movements ruthlessly, using
maximum force of violence through their security forces – rubber bullets, live
ammunition, threats, infiltration, torture and arrests; and also employing
division, mistrust and demagogy within student and youth ranks to demonize,
criminalize, frustrate, isolate and eliminate the ‘trouble-makers’ and
‘rebel-rousers’.
It is against this
historical background, among other factors, that we must read and locate the
rehearsed violent reactions and responses of the ANC-led government towards Black
students calling for #FeesMusFall and #FreeDecolonizedEducation.
When the Minister of
Higher Education, Blade Nzimande, and the Acting National Police Commissioner,
Lieutenant-General Khomotso Phahlane, talk about a mythical “third force” that has taken over the
student movement, and stating that “student’s
actions amount to an attack on the State”, they are constructing a pretext for
the justification of State violence against students.
Portraying the students
as criminals by incarcerating them and casting them as being “infiltrated by people who have different
objectives to the students and are planning to provoke another Marikana”, the
government is forging an alibi for its violence and repression.
As such, through its
fourth arm, the media, the South African government have cunningly convinced
the whole public in their narrow blanket condemnation of student ‘violence
& destruction of property’.
Yet, dololo condemnation
of institutional violence – epistemic violence waged on students by the racist
Eurocentric educational system – destruction of identities, personalities and
minds of Afrikan children.
White properties -
buildings, bins, cars, windows, doors, chairs, computers, overhead projectors
and the like - remain much more important ‘property’ than Black minds or Black
lives in this country of double-standards and disguised hypocrisy.
So, the perpetual
violence against Black students and Black people in general, is not only
institutionalized; it is normalized. The epistemic war against Black minds is
not only acceptable; it is protected by police, bullets, stunt grenades and the
colonial law/judicial system.
Black students are part
of the broader society, and their struggles are not isolated from the general
and daily struggles of their communities which manifest as so-called service
delivery protests and labour dispute strikes.
And the government
responds in the same manner in all Black community struggles. It assembles its
police. It instils fear in the people. It shoots. It imprisons. It silences. It
kills.
The oligarchy realizes
that the student movement could catalyse a total revolution in this country if student
protests could spill over to ghettos, villages, townships and cities. If this
were to happen, their illusion of power, their treacherous comfort and fat paycheques
would be compromised.
For this reason,
#FeesMustFall currently poses the greatest threat to national security in South
Africa, as defined by the government.
So, it must be crushed
and ridiculed.
To that end, the State,
the universities and the media all collaborate to corroborate narratives that
represent students as narrow, non-thinking, irrational and violent. And all are
in agreement that the call for fees to fall in institutions of higher learning
is misplaced.
The #FeesMustFall movement
is not merely about the issue of high tertiary fees and fee increments in
universities, but speaks to broader issues of content of curricular, episteme,
socio-economic inequalities, structural racism, neo-colonialism and the
perpetual land dispossession of Black people.
#FeesMustFall is a
critique of the whole current socio-economic and political order under the ANC
regime; it exposes the bloated arrogance and implicit complicity of the current
government in the continued oppression of Black people and repression of their
aspirations.
#FeesMustFall speaks to
the generational dehumanization of Black people through a Eurocentric
educational system and racist curricular designed to enslave and colonize Black
minds by systematically excluding Black contributions to human development,
civilization and technological innovations.
As extensions of the
neo-colonial South African State, universities inflict the most dangerous form
of violence on Black youth and students, epistemic violence - soft, silent and invisible.
But it destroys Black minds. It manifests itself as generational self-hatred
and low self-esteem in the Black community.
Universities continue to
produce Eurocentric knowledge, ideas and narratives that portray Afrikans as
mere backward consumers of foreign ideas; a race of people who never produced
any constructive ideas or innovations, a people who never contributed anything
worthwhile in the fields of the sciences and technology.
This is epistemic
violence – a complete dehumanization of Black students and falsification of
history and reality.
It is an attack on
Afrikan minds/consciousness. Black people and students are expected to endure
this violence, for how long? This is the most dangerous and sophisticated kind
of violence.
Then the universities
collaborate with the State and Police to repress and suppress the students
through incarcerations, rubber bullets, stunt grenades, pepper-sprays, threats,
kidnaps and arrests.
We’ve seen students
brutalized by armed police and so-called private securities who are ordered and
deployed to university campuses to protect white property, not bodies and minds
of Black students.
Another legitimized and
justified State violence.
Yet, regardless of all
this, students are resolute that they are not backing down and are willing to
‘die’ for their cause. With many interdicted, suspended indefinitely, expelled,
imprisoned and excluded, students have nothing to lose.
The most critical
question is whether or not the #FeesMustFall movement realizes and understands
the potential threat it poses to the current government; in simple terms, are
the students ready to do the necessary community work that is required to wage
a total revolution? Perhaps, with more focused and planned organizing.
Time and history will
tell.
