South Africa: Statement of solidarity with protesting students
Students are insisting that the social value of education must come before its commercial value. Just as land should not be bought and sold, so also education is not something that should be bought and sold.
When we began our struggle ten years ago we felt that we were on our own. Today workers and students are also in struggle. Many are now organised outside of the ruling party that has so brutally repressed our struggle and many other struggles. We no longer feel that we are on our own. This is a time of new hope.
The Freedom Charter clearly states that:
• All shall have the right to occupy land wherever they choose.
• All people shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security.
More than twenty years after the end of apartheid we still do not have land and housing. A progressive government would welcome a struggle for land and housing but our struggle for land and housing has been criminalised. Over the last ten years we have been arrested, beaten, slandered, jailed, tortured, forced out of jobs, driven out of our homes and assassinated for standing up for land and housing, for what was promised in the Freedom Charter and by the ruling party.
The Freedom Charter also clearly states that:
• The doors of learning and culture shall be opened.
• Higher education and technical training shall be opened to all by means of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit.
Yet for millions of our people the doors of learning remain shut. Whole families get into debt to send one child to university. Students who are standing up for the promise first made in the Freedom Charter, and repeated many times since then, are now being shown as criminals and as short-minded in the media. They are facing violent attacks from the police and arrest.
Our struggle for land and dignity has meant that we have had to insist that the social value of land must come before its commercial value. Students are insisting that the social value of education must come before its commercial value. Just as land should not be bought and sold so also education is not something that should be bought and sold. Just as we occupy land students are occupying universities.
Many of our young people, and even some of our older people, would like to go to university. There are people in our movement who had to abandon their studies for the struggle. During the struggle there was a slogan ‘Liberation now, education later’. But those who sacrificed their education for the struggle were never offered ‘education later’. This generation also deserves the chance to study, even if they are now retired. This is a question of justice.
We all wish for our children to be able to go to university one day.
However it has pained us when young people who have been nurtured by our communities, by our work, sacrifices and struggle, go to universities, forget us, and become part of the system of oppression. The universities should not stand above society. They should be part of society. There should never be a fence around a university. Poor people and workers should be as welcome as anyone else in every university in South Africa. Black people must feel at home in all of our universities.
Many of the students that have come to be in solidarity with us from all over the world have told us that they were first radicalized in struggles around university fees. We hope that many of the students who are now struggling against university fees in South Africa will became part of the larger struggle for human dignity.
When our movement started ten years ago we had some connections to the Socialist Students’ Movement in Durban. Recently we have twice been able to send delegates to meet with the Black Students’ Movement in Grahamstown.
We have often worked closely with radical students and academics from South Africa, and from around the world. When they are able to humble themselves and their knowledge is brought into our movement, and mixed with our knowledge, a powerful force can be created. We have learnt from them and they have learnt from us.
However over the last ten years we have also faced serious racism from some academics and students. For many academics and students we, as poor black people, are seen as criminals and as people who can’t think like other people. We are seen as people that cannot think for ourselves, organise ourselves and lead our own struggles. We are seen as people who must always be under the control of someone else. It is thought that our only role is to provide ‘the masses’ that can be bussed into meetings and used for projects over which we have no control. Some white academics and students have thought that they should think for us instead of with us. When we have stood firm against this racism we have been criminalised and slandered. We see no difference between how these academics have behaved and how the state has behaved.
Although we are not in the universities we have also experienced the racism in the universities and we offer our full support to the challenge by the students to the serious racism in our universities.
In our ten years of struggle we have learnt that in order to be taken seriously we have to work outside of the official channels because those channels are set up by the system of oppression and work to sustain its power over our lives. When we occupy land and blockade roads we are told that we are ‘out of order’ and called ‘violent’ and ‘criminal’. When the police attack us it is described as ‘restoring order’. However our experience has clearly shown that that when order is oppressive it is good to be out of order.
It is our hope that the struggles in the universities will connect with the struggles in the mines and the factories and the struggles in the communities. It is our hope that a powerful and democratic national movement of movements can be built, a movement of movements that respects the autonomy of all organisations and struggles, a movement of movements that can bring the state and capital under the control of the people, a movement of movements that can ensure that the land, wealth, cities and power are shared fairly and that the doors of learning are opened.
Inkani iyo ezovula indlela.
T.J. Ngongoma 084 613 9772
Thapelo Mohapi 076 186 1884
Zandile Nsibande 062 947 1947