Johannesburg - A new research report has peeled off the layers of violent student protests for free, decolonised education in the country, revealing the classist and exclusionary nature of South Africa’s democratic dispensation.
At the core of the study, released by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) in Joburg on Thursday, are enigmatic realities and questions that point to a society paralysed by various forms of violence.
As such, the wave of student protests which gained popularity through the #FeesMustFall label resembled everyday struggles of marginalised and disenfranchised black South Africans, whose howls were consistently shut down through the use of force by police.
Haunting recorded conversations with students, leaders and academics who were at the coalface of the movement point to a delayed awakening by the country to what black people and students deal with in their odyssey towards “emancipation”.
The rise of the movement was a double-edged sword for students from Tshwane University of Technology’s (TUT) under-resourced Soshanguve campus, and another black institution, the University of Limpopo.
The students said at last their suspicions of being ignored on the basis of their “blackness” had been proven true.
In a chapter titled “Protests cannot be reduced to fees must fall”, Wits University MA student Marcia Vilakazi had to consistently contend with the question students at TUT still struggled to make peace with, which was why student protests only took centre stage in the public discourse when Wits and other former white institutions got on the bandwagon.
“TUT Soshanguve kids are never listened to because of their perceived lower class,” said a non-protesting student in November last year. Another said: “I was annoyed that the only time our cries were heard was when universities like Wits, UCT and Stellenbosch started protesting over fees.
“This got me asking, ‘what is so special about them? Are we not important enough in the government’s eyes to be heard on our own, without support from Wits, Stellenbosch and UCT?’”
Vilakazi denoted the sentiments to mean race, class and status of the university played a role in even how the media decided who was worthy of coverage.
Wits academic Professor Achille Mbembe outlined the concept in his remarks about the report, putting on the spot the version of democracy that resulted in the ignorance of certain voices.
“It’s not true that in our current dispensation, every single voice counts, matters and is listened to, so we have a serious crisis here.
“The student movement is a massive indictment of our democracy, that is failing to a large extent to listen to and make every voice count and be heard. What is on trial is the kind of social order that has prevailed since liberation,” he explained.
Mbembe unpacked a history that many of the interviewed students in the study backed up with their lived experiences. Take, for example, the University of Limpopo, where 93% of the students receive government grants, bursaries or loans through the National Student Financial Aid Scheme.
There, students recounted how their predecessors paved the way for policy reforms that led to the introduction of the first financial aid system for students post-democracy.
Yet, when students at the institution made distress calls to the country about being raped, shot at during the dead of night and kicked out of the university’s premises during the chaos, no one flinched.
“There were countless protests, countless shut-downs and efforts, but these were not given the same space as the #FeesMustFall movement, which is given attention by the same media.
“You can’t disassociate that there used to be the Tertiary Education Fund for South Africa (TEFSA), and now you even have NFSAS saying that when final-year students have passed their entire course, their loans must be changed into a bursary. These are victories of relentless struggles and violent protests waged by students and generations of student leaders at Turfloop and other black universities.”
Researcher Musawenkosi Malabela, who consulted with students in Limpopo, recounted students’ stories of how, after being thrown out of residences for protesting, upon arriving at their impoverished rural homes, their families simply ordered them to go back to school.
This, he explained, was because the funding allocated to students also provided much-needed cash for their poor households, and the university simply used this as a tool when shutting down the institutions soon after protests flared.
Similar cases were recorded at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where unabated scenes of violence and destruction of public property marred the calls for free and decolonised education.
The violence witnessed was, according to Godfrey Maringir, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), a symptom of the ‘cost of blackness”.
“FeesMustFall can be seen as a manifestation of deep-seated disaffection with structural racial inequalities and the endemic poverty associated with blackness.
“Participants in the study openly expressed their disillusionment with the lack of funding of higher education for poor black students at universities.”
Maringir dissected the metaphorical violence experienced by black students by first insisting on a perspective that moves beyond universities, seeking rather understanding of where the students came from, where they stayed, what they ate and about their journey to and from the university campus.
“For black students who sleep with hunger every day, it’s violence on its own. For students distributed substandard condoms, it’s violence on its own. For students using overcrowded trains to campus, it’s violence. Students robbed on their way to campus is violence,” said a group of UWC students Maringir interviewed. “How do you stop me from being angry when I’m hungry?” the students asked.
The study found there were also instances where violence was used as a tool for the advancement of political aspirations.
Despite this, a common thread of the experiences was the insistence by students that the police and university management could have reacted better to the protests so as not to ignite an already combustible environment.
Some believed their actions were simply an act of resistance. The study also revealed a strong desire by most students for the movement to regroup and find its footing again.
@ThetoThakane