Thando Sipuye - SABC Hair Interview - 22 November 2016

Thando Sipuye was interviewed by the SABC about his views on the recent incident where a student belonging to the Nazarine Baptist Church (Shembe Church) was forcefully shaven by the teachers. Conducted on the 22nd November 2016.

(Why?) #FeesMustFall Is A Threat To The State

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.

Black Consciousness Stalwart, Ntate Kgalushi 'Drake' Koka Speaks to RasTafari Community

A speech by Ntate Kgalushi 'Drake' Koka delivered on the 07th November 1996 during the celebrations of the Anniversary of the Coronation of His & Her Imperial Majesties, Haile Selassie I & Itegu Menen of Ethiopia.

This was also during the historic visit to Azania by Ancient Elder Congo Watu (Ras Boanerges) to Marcus Garvey RasTafari Community in 1996.

Ntate Koka spoke about the Afrikan values of UBUNTU and its relationship with the Afrikan personality and the broader Afrikan liberation.

He also spoke about the significance of the RasTafari Movement, as well as the critical importance of decolonizing the education system in Azania (SA).

Decolonizing the Education System in Azania: The Case for an Africentrik Epistemic Revolution

A presentation by Thando Sipuye at the Fort Hare Centenary conference on the Enduring Legacies of Pan Africanism & African Nationalism held at the Steve Biko Centre in Ginsberg from the 28th - 30th September 2016.


The title of Thando Sipuye's talk was 'Decolonizing the Education System in Azania: The Case For An Africentrik Epistemological Revolution'.


Read the full speech here:
Full Speech by Thando Sipuye - Decolonizing the Education System in Azania

Black House Kollective - Black Talks - #FeesMustFall Activists

ONLY PRIVILEGE SPEAKS: WHITE RACISM & BLACK HYPOCRISY (AROUND HAIR POLITICS) IN SOUTH AFRICA

By Thando Sipuye

Privilege and proximity to whiteness speaks. A position of privilege and relative proximity to whiteness not only gives you a voice to speak in this country, it also provides you with an inter-national audience, ministerial interventions, public outrage, debates and dialogues. And of course, you form part of the ‘national narrative’.

The recent protest by young Black girls at the Pretoria Girls High published on (social) media is a clear case in point here. This incident exposes not only the totality of white racism in South Africa, but also the disguised hypocrisy of us Black people in dealing with it.

Yearly in South Africa children of the RasTafari community and Black children who keep dreadlocks for spiritual purpose like Intwaso or Ukuthwasa are rejected, chased away or suspended from (township & rural) schools for their dreadlock hairstyles – which forms part of their spiritual-cultural heritage and philosophical worldviews.

Yet, dololo (absolutely no) Black outrage against this clearly age-old racist practise which can be traced back to the advent of Black enslavement and the later arrival of European Missionaries, and their subsequent demonization of everything Afrikan.

The stories of rejected, chased away or suspended Rasta children and those who keep dreadlocks because of Intwaso or Ukuthwasa have been published and circulated widely on all (social) media platforms in this country; and even published in the country’s prominent newspapers, tabloids, radio and even television news.

These stories of dread exclusion and humiliation are also well recorded in some documents and reports of the Department of Education, South African Human Rights Commission, Equal Education and the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Commission).

Earlier in January this year, the Principal of SBC Serumula in Tembisa expelled Grade 9 student Palesa Mailane from school because she has dreadlocks. Palesa had been admitted to the school the previous year in September, and the principal immediately instructed her parents to cut off her hair.

Palesa’s parents replied informing the school’s Principal that Palesa was a RasTafari child and that keeping dreadlocks was part of her spiritual-cultural tradition (religion). The parents sought help from Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi’s office, which assisted in getting the girl reinstated to school.

But the Department of Education subsequently asked the parents to prove the religious significance of the teenager’s dreadlocks, and later said that Palesa’s dreadlock hairstyle did not comply with the schools code of conduct.

17 year old Anathi Marhe from Mfuleni High School also suffered the same systematic and sanctioned racism earlier this year on 13 January when his class teacher told him that boys are not allowed to have dreadlocks and he should cut them.

Consequently, when Anathi told the teacher he was RasTafari and that dreadlocks were part of his religious faith, the teacher shouted back at him: “we don’t teach RasTafarians in the school, you will bring bad influence”. This teacher literally refused to even teach the class while Anathi was in attendance.

Then there’s the stories of Odwa Sityata, Grade 8 pupil from Joe Slovo Engineering High School in Khayelitsha - suspended because of his dreadlocks; Afrika Nazo from the Alpha and Omega Christian Academy - chased away from school for wearing dreadlocks for cultural reasons; Yola Makasi Grade R learner from King’s College - denied learning because of his dreadlocks; Sikhokhele Diniso, Grade 10 pupil from Siphamandla High School in Khayelitsha - told not to come back to school because of his dreadlocks; Palesa Radebe from Leseding Technical School - routinely taken out of class and seated at the staffroom while her peers got tuition because she has dreadlocks. After Palesa was reinstated to school, the School Governing Body initiated a protest saying there would be no learning as long as Palesa Radebe attended classes.

These stories are countless and were widely published on prominent (social) media. So why was the general Black public silent about the racism and humiliation suffered by these Black children in township and rural schools?  And in turn, what is it about the recent incident at Pretoria Girls High School that warranted the kind of outrage and reactions we’ve seen on (social) media from Black people?

The only reasonable answer is that Black people are hypocrites and selective when it comes to dealing with racism-white supremacy. I’m not a Marxist, but perhaps this is a matter of class and privilege. The higher up the ladder of socio-economic privilege, and the relatively closer you are to whiteness and the status thereof, the more audible you are in a society that ensures the permanent silence and invisibility of the underprivileged and excluded Black majority.

Or perhaps, as Steve Biko once stated, this Black silence and the general non-responsiveness to these stories is an explicit manifestation of the deep-seated, internalized self-hatred Black people suffer from; a white induced psychosis of some sort.

But Christine Qunta argues in her book ‘Why We Are Not A Nation’ that the condition Black people find themselves in is much more complex than self-hatred, arguing that “self-hatred is only one part of a complex set of symptoms of a psychological disorder that has become chronic throughout the Black world”.

The general response of some Black people to these stories has been to condemn the parents of these children, vilify them for backwardness or being ‘dirty’, or try to ‘advise’ (actually instruct) them to cut off the hair of their children in order for them to access the basic human right of education. In all the above stated cases most Blacks sided with the schools, slurring at both parents and children for breaking schools ‘codes of conduct’.

What is it about Afrikan hair, Afrikan hairstyles and Afrikan culture that breaks school ‘rules’ and ‘codes of conduct; do the kinks and knots on Afrikan hair bind and incapacitate Afrikans from thinking?

Historically all Afrikan slaves, male or female, were shaved bald by the slave-master. And later, all converts to Christianity - people who had denounced their own culture, history and philosophical worldviews and accepted the concept of a white Jesus and the religion of their oppressors - were shaved bald and given new European clothes to wear, and European (Christian) names.

And history also records that the first schools in this country were colonial schools established by white missionaries for the training of the newly converted Blacks. Today, most township and rural schools continue functioning in the tradition of colonial schools and institutions, negating indigenous knowledge systems, systematically oppressive to Afrikan children and Afrikan culture.

All of this was done by Europeans as part of the process of breaking down the Afrikan, completely severing the spiritual and cultural ties that consciously bound them to their ancestral memory and identity.

Thus, many Black schools today accept, and even encourage, that Black pupils use dangerous hair-straightening chemicals called ‘relaxers’ on their hair to look ‘beautiful’. And at worst, these schools systematically force Black boys and girls to completely shave their heads bald as a rule, like prisoners really.

These schools really operate more like prisons, where Black students are treated like incarcerated inmates and the teachers are the wardens who keep them in check, ‘disciplined’. And here ‘disciplined’ means in line with and obedience to whiteness. This is the same slave-and-master relationship training which begins at a very early age, reserved strictly for Black children.

And yet, there has never been any outrage from the general Black public against these institutional and structural racist practises, ‘rules’ and ‘codes of conduct’ which are administrated and enforced by Black principals and teachers (in township and rural schools).

But when children from privileged white schools located in the lofty suburbs of Pretoria speak, when children situated in close proximity to whiteness raise their voices, the whole nation erupts in public outrage, protests, debates and dialogues about racism and aesthetics in South African schools. Why?

The RasTafari Movement has always articulated the Afrocentric position that the dreadlocks on their hair bear a spiritual and political significance – a revolutionary symbol of cultural resistance against societal imposition of Eurocentric beauty standards and styles as the basic norm.

Traditional Afrikan spirituality and people who keep dreadlocks because of Intwaso or Ukuthwasa also articulate a clear position about the spiritual significance of dreadlocks in their cultural expression and communion with Ancestors.

But these voices have remained largely marginalized, ridiculed, muted, silenced, unheard by neither the government, department of education, nor the Black public that is now erupting against what has recently happened at Pretoria Girl’s High. As though some Black people’s hair (afro) is more important or better than other Black people’s hair (dreadlocks).

Christine Qunta clarifies for us that: “if skin colour is the important signification of beauty in a white supremacist world view, the real dividing line between those who are ‘the chosen’ and those who are not is hair”.

While we support fully the struggle of the young Black girls at Pretoria Girls High in principle and solidarity, we must however realize that there is a degree to which some Black people are complicit (consciously or subconsciously) in the continued administration, enforcement, reinforcement, defence and perpetuation of structural and institutional racism, racist attitudes and racist stereotypes against other Black people in this country.

These are the kind of Blacks that Steve Biko said needed to be reminded of their complicity in the crime of allowing themselves to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of their birth.

All in the name of advancing outdated ‘progressive’ white-supremacist, colonial and neo-colonial school ‘rules’ and ‘codes of conduct’.

FEZEKILE NTSUKELA KUZWAYO ‘KWEZI’ – FACELESS, UNKNOWN & EXILED: SALUTE TO THE FOUR BRAVE BLACK WOMBMEN FOR REMINDING US

I’ve just watched the video of the four brave and courageous Black wombmen (including Simamkele Dlakavu and Naledi Chirwa – don’t know the names of the other two) who restored the memory of Zuma’s rape of sista Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo (Kwezi) about a decade ago.

More than anything, I was very disturbed by the active display of Zuma’s body-guards (old, ugly, terrifying Black men) snatching their placards, pushing and shoving the four sistaz – with anger all over their faces. For the first time, that was just a slap of patriarchy right in my face.

Something just rose up inside me and I boiled with anger seeing this bullshit. Those wombmen posed no security threat to Zuma or any of the shameful “dignitaries” there.

Why did those old, ugly, terrifying Black men (body-guards) push, shove and heckle at our sistaz when they posed no threat to Zuma’s body; what exactly were these old, ugly, terrifying body-guards protecting/concealing?

Protecting a RAPIST and concealing RAPE.

These four sistaz had a silent and non-violent protest against a violation of a Black wombman. Yet they were removed violently by men, all this happening during so-called Woman’s Month, few days before Woman’s Day.

If these four wombmen were treated with such violence infront of cameras on national television, imagine the kind of violence Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo (Kwezi) experienced at the hands of ANC cronies and members who wanted to protect Zuma at all costs.

Imagine the kind of violence that forces a wombman, a rape victim to flee her own motherland, her own country to be exiled in a foreign land. This Black wombman, forced to run from home to a whiteboy’s land, Amsterdam, to be comforted and supported by whites.

This week, in celebration of Women’s Month, the ANC will be hosting cocktails talking about wombmen this! wombmen that!

Yet, the ANC Women’s League and women leaders in the ANC, like Bathabile Dlamini, condemned these four brave Queens who reminded us of sista Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo (Kwezi), protecting the rapist pimp Zuma.

The ANC Women’s League is like the mother who refuses to listen to her daughter when she tells her that “mama, daddy raped me”, and instead lashes out at her – protecting the rapist dad.

Jacob Zuma raped Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, the daughter of his late friend Judson Kuzwayo, his fellow prisoner on Robben Island who died in exile.

It’s quite interesting to note how Fezekile’s name was changed to ‘Kwezi’ – to protect her identity - and she remains faceless, unknown, exiled in a white foreign land, Amsterdam. Comforted and supported by whites there.

Zuma and the ANC would wish that she dies in exile, just like her father, Zuma’s buddy.

Damn, my Black Sisters, I now overstand your pain better. We really need each other.

#RememberKwezi

#FezekileNtsukelaKuzwayo