Remember, each one teach one
Effective protest does not depend on violence and the destruction of public property, writes S’thembiso Msomi. It depends on presenting a broad and cohesive front
IN times of seemingly intractable crisis young people have often made crucial interventions that have helped change the course of history.
So it is hardly surprising that in this period of political uncertainty and economic stagnation, many people are increasingly looking to the youth movement for hope and possible solutions.
The rise of the#Fallist movement at our institutions of higher learning over the past two years has heightened expectations of a local “Arab Spring” in which the post1994 order will be replaced by a supposedly more just and egalitarian system.
During the first decade of the 20th century, as it became apparent that the vast majority of this country’s inhabitants were to be excluded from the full citizenship of the then envisaged Union of South Africa, it was young men like Pixley ka Isaka Seme who led the protest.
The missionary-school-educated and US-trained intellectual was only 29 when, in 1912, he played a leading role in the formation of the South African Native National Congress — which later became the ANC — to fight the exclusion of black people from the Union.
Previous attempts at resistance had largely been confined to specific regions and limited to particular ethnic groups.
In the opening address at its inaugural conference in 1912, ka Seme observed that it was “the first time that so many elements representing different tongues and tribes ever attempted to co-operate under one umbrella in one great house”.
But by the ’40s this movement was all but dead, with its conservative and ageing leadership unable to wage any meaningful resistance against the rising tide of grand apartheid.
Endless deputations to London and annual conferences that passed beautifully-crafted resolutions had long proved ineffective, yet the old guard persisted.
Once again it took a young generation of activists to breathe new life into the struggle.
Young intellectuals such as Anton Lembede and his friend AP Mda, Jordan Ngubane, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo agitated for the formation of the ANC Youth League, which was to lobby for a militant approach to racial discrimination.
Over the years, they transformed the ANC from “an organisation of a privileged . . . professionals, small traders, a sprinkling of intellectuals and conservatives of all grades” into a mass movement that embarked on meaningful defiance campaigns.
But as the new tactics of struggle became increasingly effective in mobilising the population and the world against the government’s policies, the state became increasingly repressive. By the mid-’60s, the ANC, the PAC and all other black anti-apartheid political formations had been banned. Their leaders and activists were in jail or exile or had gone underground.
Another long lull in anti-apartheid political activity in the country followed.
And then came the young Steve Biko, the Black Consciousness Movement and the 1976 Soweto student uprising.
From that point, the resistance struggle in South Africa was unstoppable, culminating in the early’90s negotiations that led to the 1994 democratic breakthrough.
In exile, too, young people asked tough questions of their leaders, who were perceived to have become complacent. Young activists such as Chris Hani risked death at the hands of their comrades when they compiled a petition calling into question their senior leadership’s commitment to the cause.
Young pioneers have always had to confront stiff resistance from their elders.
It was South African intellectual Jabulani “Mzala” Nxumalo who wrote that “there seems to be nothing as difficult as changing an old establishment which prides itself on the fact that it is old”.
Nxumalo, who was writing from exile at the height of Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost, continued: “Yet there are moments when history demands ‘glasnost’ or openness — bringing everything into the open, hiding nothing, no matter how painful, so as to overcome inertia and stimulate the extraordinary potential of the people to renovate their organisation and life”.
Has the rise of student activism over the past two years been our “glasnost” moment — a time to openly call into question all our assumptions about where our country is and where it is going? Most certainly. But sections of this student movement appear to be making mistakes similar to those of its predecessors.
Because the students waged the #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall struggles on their own initiative and managed to capture the country’s imagination for a few weeks, some began to believe that they alone can bring about meaningful change in the country.
They view as a betrayal of the cause the involvement of other sectors of society — workers, professionals, religious groups and politicians — in efforts to solve the problems facing the country.
It is this suspiciousness that characterised the behaviour of prominent leaders of the Soweto Student Representative Council when they went into exile. Tsietsi Mashinini went as far as forming the South African Youth Revolutionary Council out of the misguided belief that only young people could be relied upon to deliver a free and nonracial South Africa.
Of course, as history proved, it would take a much broader front of interest groups and communities to bring about the kind of change that was needed.
We live in a free society now, albeit one in which the legacy of apartheid remains.
The student movement has done exceptionally well in forcing South African society to confront its unresolved issues, especially as they relate to the fair distribution of resources and what the students call decolonisation. But if the country is to successfully move beyond the identification of its failures and weaknesses to finding lasting solutions, it will take much more than students who, by the very nature of tertiary institutions, are part of the country’s elite.
Extremely high youth unemployment is the single most urgent crisis confronting our country. This is a result of the structural defects of the economy and a shockingly poor public education system that is unable to provide the majority of young South Africans with the skills they need.
By working closely with unemployed young people, perhaps the student movement can help find new solutions to the employment crisis — much like the student movement of the ’80s did to assist communities that had their schools shut down during the political riots of that era.
One of the most positive aspects of the #FeesMustFall movement, especially in its initial stages, was that — like the ’50s and ’60s AfricanAmerican student movement that staged sit-ins to demand civil rights — it proved that an effective protest is not contingent upon violence and the destruction of property.
Imagine if our student movement were to be more consistent in following the example of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee of the ’60s by holding successful peaceful protests all the time.
They could start a new trend for protest politics in this post-apartheid South Africa that seems stuck following the insurrectionary tactics of the past.
And in the process, they would be saving our schools and libraries from being destroyed.