Disclaimer: firstly this is super long so if you are interested to hear what I have to say about specific issues there are some subtitles so feel free to skim through those. Secondly I’d like to make it understood that although my life is made more difficult by the expense of fees it is not made impossible so I am not effected to the same degree as some students. Thirdly I acknowledge I am white and therefore privileged and this will limit my understanding of this issues and hence what I have to say and I ask you to please keep this in mind while reading. Fourth – and finally – this is not meant to target any specific individual or group so please DO NOT TAKE THIS PERSONALLY
We Rise : A glimpse of the mass support that arrived at the meeting on Jammie PlazaOoh and all the photos are my own
Hi all,
I know I have been absent over the last couple of weeks but it is not because I have forgotten about the blog but rather that the topic which I wished to write on, South African student movement ‘Fees Must Fall’, was one which I have had a deep desire to write on yet one that I found extremely difficult to verbalise my thoughts on.
When I feel strongly about something I battle to give it justice in my writing. Eventually however I always suck it up and try my best in the end because the need for exposure and to put these ideas out there is greater than that of my creative inadequacies.
Oh Dear Lord: throughout this ordeal religious groups and leaders have shown their commitment and support to this causeI have been reading and rereading and watching and seeing things to do with the past couple of weeks that have invoked a series of conflicting emotions in me. I was horrified, terrified and stressed but also I was amazed, inspired and full of hope. Because of this, I could not sit and say nothing about the past couple of weeks. As someone who takes part in writing on a regular basis I needed to say write something of importance but it was so difficult to find the words to represent how I felt.
The #FEESMUSTFALL movement started at Wits University and slowly moved across the country till it was nationwide. It was originally a response to massive increases imposed on next year’s fees. These increases would make it even more difficult for most students to afford the already high costs of tertiary education especially those coming from underprivileged backgrounds. The expense of university as it stands already creates a separation between those people who can further their education and their futures and those who cannot based on socio-economic status and in a country like ours where race is a notable difference between classes (mostly due to the horrific racial segregation that existed in our past) this limits equality and economic growth of the majority of the country. An idea from the movement was that tertiary education should not be a luxury afforded to the rich but rather a right and an opportunity for all. This was part what pushed the movement to no longer be simply about the increase but rather that the government and the university management should be making plans and pushing to have free education on a university level to allow for the best outcomes for all young people in the country.
The movement bought disruption and inconvenience for some but for others in bought hope and unity. Below I am going to discuss some of the ideas/issues/talking points that have come out this period.
Police Brutality
Amidst the protests, the chaos and everything else that has occurred recently existed an extreme reaction from the police. Now before going into this I acknowledge that information around this issue has been portrayed with bias from all involved including the students, the police and of course the media and I have considered this as best as possible when forming my opinion.
See Me: it reads “Fuck the police”Now in my mind and what I have experience when involved in the protests is that they have been remarkably peaceful and many of those involved have taken a specific stance at maintaining the peace even among their peers (which I definitely respect about my generation). Aside from this there have been individuals, as is expected, who are extremists and those who have taken advantage of the situation and shown violence but for the majority the protests were NON-VIOLENT. Despite this there have been instances where the police have reacted aggressively.
I will focus on what occurred at UCT but it has happened all over the country with many students being attacked with water cannons, rubber bullets and stun grenades far too liberally but I don’t have enough knowledge to discuss these specific instances.
The first bout of violence was when students occupied Bremner/Azania House (managements building) and due to a court order by the university (this has since been lifted and apologised for) disallowing this disruption, the police were called. This was to remove the students from a sort of ‘sit-in’ type meeting both in and out of the building. The police struggled to remove those who were there and so responded with stun grenades. To my knowledge the students were not accommodating to the polices’ requests however they were non-violent and I honestly don’t see how this came about. It was a response which was far too extreme for the situation and lost the police any respect that the youth may have still held.
After this incident one might expect for students to react violently in response yet the peaceful approach was maintained.
It was then that the big event happened. This was the march on Parliament. The aim was for students to disrupt Parliament, where the budget policy was being addressed, to make the government aware of the students’ demands and force them to acknowledge and deal with it. There was a large riot police presence however the students still heavily outnumbering the armored men.
Other than a minority of individuals who were being violent most students remained peaceful. They did break through the gates into the precinct of parliament. Thousands of people moved into the open area enclosed by the gates. This was when they were then hit with masses of stun grenades. With only one small opening, many student were stuck unable to get out fearing for their safety and minor injuries did occur. Some students were also arrested (Side note: it is illogical to charge a small percentage with a ‘crime’ that thousands committed. This does not fulfill the ‘fairness’ of justice). From my point of view, and I was at home recovering from dehydration and glued to the live stream of eNCA, the violence was unnecessary and horrifying to watch. I was appalled, devastated and on the verge of tears as I watched people I know get tossed around like dolls and engulfed in a haze of white and pink smoke.
I can sympathise with the idea that the police were overwhelmed and the anger that the students were feeling could have both intimidating and frightening. At the point where the students became trespassers and broke the gate (and the law) it is possible that force would have been used however at no other time was extreme force of that kind necessary or helpful. The students were desperate but they were being peaceful and the ease at which the stun grenades seemed to be launched was alarming particularly since much of the crowd is shown to be standing still when they were attacked. The students were armed with water bottles, strappy shirts, shorts and sneakers while the police had batons, stun grenades, shields and heavy armor. Not really a fair match.
The use of violence against students mobilising for equal opportunity in education is reminiscent of South Africa’s dark past and definitely not something I thought I would see in my lifetime.
And on that note the lack of care and desire to come out and try and create peace from the president and other leaders situate right inside that building was frankly disgusting. There was no movement from our leadership to come out and protect their children and this is something I will always hold against them. It also gave plenty of opportunity for opposition parties like the EFF and DA to take advantage of the situation which the ANC couldn’t be bothered to even try do.
The white student (note this is where generalising happened – try not to get offended this may not apply to you)
One of the media’s big talking points was the ‘diversity’ in the movement due to the involvement of students of all races/genders/ethnicities/religions etc. This has had mixed responses.
Watching: Anonymous perched on Jameson HallThe first issue was that there were still many wealthy (mostly white) students who hid in their ignorance and did not take part, opposed the movement and didn’t even try understand the issues. There were students fighting as this was their only chance at still being able to afford university next year and alongside them were students who were so comfortable in their wealth that they wasted more money on flying home (or going to the beach in the first days of protests yet complaining about not being able to go to varsity. I see your hypocrisy holiday makers.). This showed a massive divide between socio-economic class and an extreme lack of empathy from wealthy students.
But adults, the media and everybody else were amazed by the uniqueness of our generation and the love and hope that we held and although the idealistic part of me has always believed this I had issues with this.
a – The movement stood for something important and in my opinion should have been appreciated regardless of how many white children got involved. ‘Whiteness’ should not have had to legitimise this cause for the media and for many of those who externally took an interest.
Fuck It: a protester expresses their frustraitionb – When it comes to the youth, white university students have been involved for a while. In the late 80s and early 90s protesting was a regular part of life for many young white people in the country. Students are more open minded, more involved and terrified of FOMO and so they take the opportunity. This is not to discredit the passionate involved white students. Please take part forever it is far more productive than you flying home for the week. Anyway my point is that I don’t think this says anything in particular about our generation. In my opinion it is when we are old and grey then we can see whether we are actually different. Will our dinner parties be diverse? Will we get involved with mining protests or support teaching strikes? Will we empathise with our peers or will we run away to Australia and criticise the government on Facebook? I think at that stage we can determine how different we really are.
c – The pat-on-the-back for getting involved. Ah… now I think its nice that so many people got involved and the strength of unity and mobilization of students was shown but I don’t like the fact that white students that got involved were thanked and commended but for the black kids it was just another day on the block? Thanks for the honour but you can take it back. Sure, welcome to the party kids but if anyone needs honouring it’s the black students for not giving up and persevering for the great length of time it took for us to finally decide to get involved.
Also a word on the Facebook education/rant posts on white privilege. Although these posts have been a little aggressive and motivated by generalisations I (personally) definitely see them as necessary. They are targeting those white (or other type) privileged students who do not understand how their role in this movement is limited or stipulated by their privilege as well as the importance of understanding one’s own privilege. Now those who this does not apply to, to the same degree as others, may get offended by this but it is important to not focus on yourself as an individual but the necessity of the overall white student population and realise the degree to which you have to monitor your privilege. Plus Facebook is as good a place as any for students to vent their feelings on the topic and it is important that as a reader one takes it with a pinch of salt. Read it, appreciate it and understand its applicability to you and then move forward as best as possible AND DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY.
Also watch out there will be a post on white privilege coming soon.
Beyond Us: in this shot Cape Town can be seen in the background and it’s hard not to see the power a group of this size can have. Glimpse the People: taken from on the roof of Jameson Hall
Government vs management responsibility
Who needs to be accountable for all this? The violence? The consistent fee increase? The lack of empathy or care for the future of the youth?
We are the People: Look its AllZuriIn my opinion the responsibility falls both on the shoulders of University Management and the government.
Simply put:
University management was not transparent, they did not put in enough effort into implementing solutions to reduce costs (FOR EXAMPLE SUSTAINABILITY/ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION/IS IT REALLY THAT DIFFICULT GUYS???), they did not take sufficient steps to hear out the issues of the student body and shifted the blame to individuals or student groups (as they have been doing the whole year) rather than help improve communication and deal with issues when they occur. It is the role of the Vice Chancellor and management in general to represent the students and their concerns to the government when necessary and it took them far too long to make take up this responsibility.
Balde, You ain’t so sharp: Blade, Minister of Higher Education, was held accountable by studentsAnd IF they did in fact do all of this and we just couldn’t see it then they really battle to understand the meaning of TRANSPARENCY and basically every VC in the country failed dramatically in this area.
And as far as the government. They did not show care for the safety of students, they showed little initiative in finding solutions for these issues and obviously the corruption and greed which exists within the political structures is still not be dealt with effectively. There is little to no role models in leadership which students can look up to and it is disappointing that a government in which most members were denied an equal opportunity to education at all from the previous Apartheid system are inflicting a very similar limitation on their own people.
Why is it that only when students are crying out and marching in the street and when the country is bought to a standstill do any of the ‘powers that be’ start to pay attention?
My role
So what did I do? Who was I in this movement? My friend and fellow blogger Refiloe Mokgele (All Zuri) wrote about the various people that could be found in and around this movement. As I read it I couldn’t help but categorise myself.
I’d say I am, as Fifi puts it, a ‘passive creative’ – “Taking amazing pictures/ writing poems as the masses of protesters pass by. Posting on social media.”
One thing about the movement was that it was insanely photogenic so I can’t even claim good photography skills here. I loved documenting and sharing the movement but I must admit I was one of many and although I am proud of the art that I managed to produce I can’t honestly say it aided the movement in any way.
Faceless: This is my faceless man. He represents the anarchistic, unidentifiable type attitude of the movement much like the mask did in V for Vendetta. She represents the good Samaritans who gave endless aid.Going into this I would have considered myself brave and involved etc. But looking back the truth of the matter is that although I believed in the cause and was passionate I also felt very lost and hid behind this confusion that I felt and spent too much time contemplating life in my room and not being outside taking part. Personally I have learnt a lot for myself and what I should do in the future but as far as this specific movement I guess I disappointed myself by not doing as much as I could have.
However on the days that I did go out (then falling into the category of Newbie) I enjoyed it but was definitely just a foot soldier/part of the crowd and it was weird for me to be surrounded by so many people as dedicated to a cause as I was, if not more dedicated. I was intimidated and in awe by what I saw and it gave me great hope for my generation. It humbled me as I realised that I really am very small and insignificant next to students, not that much older than myself, who lead a revolution. To those students I commend you and I apologise for my lack of participation.
What I did do (a lot of) however was explain very patiently too many of my ignorant white peers why this movement was worth and continuously forced people to consider the movement in what they were doing and made it my mission to be informed so I could inform others. I’ve always been better at words than action and I felt the need to do as much as possible from a vocal perspective (although this does not make up for not taking part).
Bread Break: Taken at Clarinus Village Residence UCT while protests take a moment to breath after walking down main road in 30 degree heat
The power of the youth.
This was probably the most important thing to note and despite its repetitiveness throughout history it is something which we as a country and internationally forgot about up till now.
The youth have innocence and they have passion and they have hope and obviously they have numbers. The youth has always had the ability to see things for what they really are and step away from the corrupted world that surrounds them.
“Youth is the trustee of prosperity” Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
Amandla: There are no leaders, only strong voices to encourage us forward. Taken in Clarinus Village Residence UCT dining hall.
The future is the destiny of the youth and it up to us to control that destiny. We also have the energy and inspiration that our parents once had an already used up. South Africa is tried of fighting but we have never fought and we are ready to fight. We are called born frees and yet the environment we have lived in is not free from racial or sexual injustice. It is not free from corruption and poverty. I am still impowered because of my race and I still live in fear because of my gender.
We are the kids and we are here to change this and to strive for the freedom that is owed to us.
…
A word on Twitter.
I was honoured and inspired by the beauty of what my peers managed to write about the past weeks’ events and I believe that the power of social media was definitely taken advantage of to mobilise my generation. Maybe the fact that we are so glued to our screens is not such a bad thing after all.
Lost Words: The power of words has been shown in many posters held by students in this fightI am absolutely appalling on Twitter so I really am inspired by those of you who use it so incredible well. It is a beautiful medium that I am now inspired to use.
The skill of the youth at representing such complexity so eloquently is remarkable and commendable.
And lastly a quote from Desmond Tutu
“Give young people a greater voice. They are the future and they are much wiser than we give them credit for.”
Apologise for the long post and watch out for more posts on other important issues like outsourcing, the role of women and how to exist in a national shutdown.
x J
Fear the Educated Youth: For they understand their power
The difficulty which comes when writing blogs is finding time to write them and when you are in your last year of school and for no logical reason you take a dozen extra things it is particularly difficult to fit blogging in. I’ve been sick lately. A ghastly bit of flu which I was bound to get when I spend so many hours of the day in confined classrooms with at least one sick person. Along with this I had the biggest and last English Oral of my high school career as well as a History preprelim (a pre pre final exam – yes it is a bit over the top) and so I have been running around, or more walking as flu slows one down slightly, like a headless chicken trying to prepare. But now today is over so I can blog but inspiration combined with laziness struck me so I thought “Why not just use the piece of writing you’ve been working on all week?”. I know pure indolent genius.
So I have decided to give you my speech. We were given no topic which posed difficulties. I mean you want to end on bang but not a flop so I in the end decided to talk about a person who I admire.
From now on pretend this is being read to you by an almost 18-year-old girl with a slightly posh (or at least my friends call me posh in speeches) South African accent of medium frequency with a slight nasal backdrop and if you really want authenticity imagine a cough here or there.
When given absolutely no speech topic at all it becomes quite difficult to shift through all the things worth talking about, all the things that one loves to find a singular topic that is speech worthy. So I did what I always do and decided to fall back on the author and poet that keeps me going through everything… good old funky and fantastic Dr Seuss.
Dr Seuss was born in 1902 and no his surname is not Seuss and his first name isn’t Dr. He was born as Theodor Geisel but how did he become the famous Seuss? Well he, as most aspiring young literature lovers do, worked as a student journalist for a college magazine called Jack-o-lantern. One day however he and some friends were bust drinking which was quite a bad thing at the time considering that alcohol was prohibited by law so he got kicked off the magazine but he was after all in the making of becoming the incredible writer we know today and whoever ran the magazine noticed this and so he allowed Theodor Geisel to still write but under a pseudonym and Geisel chose his middle name Seuss.
This was the start of an incredible career of writing through which Mr Geisel decided to stick with the pen name rather than his own.
I won’t tell you every detail of his career except that it took him a while to find himself both as a writer and of course an illustrator and to gather the momentum that his fame has today but at around the end of world war two his career started really moving and he started publishing children’s books. He did some incredible things. One of his most famous books and a turning point in his career was the publication of The Cat In the Hat. He wrote this in response to an article that criticised children’s reading levels. This book was written with over 220 different words to help improve children’s vocabulary. After this he took a new more educational approach to writing to try and help children while entertaining them.
A book that always stuck out for me and that even today I find myself reaching to when I feel over worked or underappreciated is If I ran the circus. Seuss wrote it for his father and I used to make my own dad read it to me almost every week. It is about a boy who wants to start a circus, the Circus McGurkus. He spends the whole book dreaming of it starting from where he will put it to what it will contain and as you turn the pages the acts get crazier and the animals get weirder and it gets more and more stoo-pendous. The stuff that he has displayed, the “many surprises, You’d never see half it if you had forty eyses”. What a circus it was. And in true Seuss fashion every page was chocabloc full of incredible illustrations. I used to sit wide eyed and fascinated. Before I could read I would just open the book and take in the pictures. That alone was enough to inspire a little girl’s imagination. I think today the fact that I read so much and always have this itch in my very soul to be creative is due to this remarkable writer.
In Oh the Places you’ll go he writes “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…” Dr Seuss strove to inspire children and in this quote and in fact the book it comes from he challenges readers to take their own initiative and move forward. There are hundreds of brilliant authors out there but I for one would never be able to appreciate any of them if Dr Seuss had not laid the ground work.
Children’s authors are the creators of readers. Whether they be Raold Dahll or Beatrice Potter but for me it was Dr Seuss and it always will be. No matter where I go, where I live or how the big book shelf in my house is I will always own at least one Dr Seuss.
Plain Old Glasses 