Can our new crop of students interrogate status quo better?
LAST Saturday morning I bumped into a large group of first-year Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) students enjoying an excursion through Port Elizabeth’s beachfront and Boardwalk Casino.
I watched them being led in a song and dance by #FeesMustFall activists.
The demo, along the beachfront pier, was in jest but I could not help but wonder if it was not a precursor of things to come.
The racial composition of the group reflected the progress made in increasing access to tertiary education for the South Africa’s black majority.
As this year begins, most of us have a great sense of trepidation, but we must also be conscious of the fact that the student protests of last year would not have taken place if South Africa was not an inordinately improved country from what it was 20 years ago.
In fact, every service delivery-related protest is a reflection of expectations created by the fact that the democratic government is delivering on its mandate to improve the lives of the country’s citizens.
I have also watched a university like NMMU make significant concessions on student institution-specific demands.
So as a country we are victims of our own success.
But as with many insurrectionary movements, some student activists see the acknowledgement of progress as weakening their position.
As a result, they fall into the trap of placing facts in a manner that suits their basis.
It is a general human weakness – the foregrounding and preference of some facts and the ignoring of those that sit uncomfortably.
So depending on who you are talking to, South Africa is either worse off than what it was prior to 1994 or a much improved.
I belong to the latter group, even though I can see that our universities still have a lot of work to do concerning transformation and pedagogical approaches.
I want to suggest that the challenge today is not only on the slow pace of change but also on the shifting focus of a movement like #FeesMustFall.
Initially, the movement was established to concentrate on the immediate needs of university students, but it has now morphed into one focused on racial nationalism.
They now present a confluence of demands dealing with outsourcing, free higher education, decolonisation, transformation and African socialism.
When I look at this list I see a case of right issues but the wrong platform.
Dealing with these matters at university level creates an open platform for racial demagogues who are focused on narrow ethnic nationalism.
These are individuals who are driven by a pathological drive to purge the country of all traces of whiteness.
They have a score to settle with colonial South Africa and also see themselves as a vanguard of black aspirations.
As self-appointed arbiters of black identity, they have also made it their duty to define, embody and police blackness on behalf of other blacks.
But in all of these philosophical debates, I have noticed that many firstyear students tend to be left behind.
Especially that most of these discussions tend to be led by authoritarian populists whose language is pregnant with insults towards anyone who does not see things the way they do.
Even a person like former president Nelson Mandela is not spared from their resentment and wrath.
In fact, they accuse him and others of selling out to their number one nemesis – white monopoly capital.
Far from encouraging debate regarding the future of South Africa, the environment in some of these universities stifles it in favour of racial identity politics.
A vigorous contestation does not happen because ideas and people are seen to be for us or against us.
Higher education communities are characterised by class distinctions and ideological differences but they always ought to show leadership on how such tensions should be successfully managed.
They are not like primary schools where one individual teaches others to recite and regurgitate information.
So I hope that the first-year class of 2017 will engage better with the challenges that face them this year.