Find out what the activists are saying

FeesMustFall is about decolonising an unjust world, not just about naughty students seeking attention

THERE is definitely a generational dimension to the public debate about how to decolonise our universities. It is fascinating how many older South Africans are resistant to hearing what, exactly, the fallists are arguing. Many prefer to misdescribe the arguments that have been put out in the public sphere.

It goes without saying that one can be old and progressive or young and justice-insensitive. But exceptions do not change the interesting generational differences we have seen emerging in the public discourse about everything ranging from the debate on university funding to access to higher education, iconography and curricula reform.

The latest bit of hysteria is from City Press editor Mondli Makhanya in an opinion piece headlined “Stop the war on knowledge” published in City Press yesterday.

The piece, which meanders all over the place, asserts that “a love of knowledge has been lacking in these 18 months” of student activism. Earlier in the piece, Makhanya asserts that any discussion about how to “decolonise the curriculum” is simply a manifestation of “inferiority complex disguised as militancy”.

The piece is actually best used as an example of how not to construct argument. It ends up, ironically, merely being an example of evidence-insensitive approaches to academic and public debate, while accusing student protesters of being the ones who do not “love knowledge”.

First, as sheer empirical fact, Makhanya simply has not read the incredible range of student voices that have intervened in these questions with academic and intellectual rigour including some of the top students in our universities and some of the justice-oriented staff members, who have rightly seen these issues as being about decolonising an unjust world, rather than being about a bunch of naughty students seeking attention.

Besides essay-length entries across various platforms, we have also seen seminars and conferences being held here and abroad featuring our young people discussing curricula reform, access to higher education, creating more inclusive spaces, etc.

Now you might disagree with what is said and argued, of course, but you cannot confuse your own lack of knowledge about what was said for a knowledge gap in student activism.

Makhanya would do well to make Google his friend, or simply to pick up the phone and actually speak to the student activists and ask them what they have written and said, and asking them where he can access the incredible amount of writing from them that has already been archived. It really isn’t hard.

And no I am not going to rattle off these citations here.

Don’t be lazy. The internet and social media in particular are a click away. Use that mouse.

Of course, one would only know what students think and say if one actually deemed them to be adults and interlocutors with agency and legitimacy in these public debates. We go out of our way only, don’t we, to accurately summarise a view we are engaging if we take the person who expresses that view seriously enough to take care to not straw-person their work.

Own disdain

And so the real revelation in hasty critiques of students that impute to students a disdain for knowledge is that the critic shows up their own disdain for the students, even daring to express a view on the society we have handed down to them.

Take the subject of philosophy which Makhanya cites casually as an example of a subject that doesn’t need to be decolonised.

Vigorous discussions have already happened among students about whether or not the names and bodies that are centred in academic philosophy courses locally speak to universities located at the tip of Africa.

The truth is that you can complete a degree in philosophy in South Africa and only ever encounter dead white European men in your curriculum. Occasionally a white woman, possibly still alive, might make a cameo appearance in the odd political philosophy course on feminism perhaps. If you’re lucky.

But black philosophical thought on metaphysics or epistemology or logic doesn’t exist in our local courses. You have to be extremely lucky to encounter a particularly socially conscious philosopher like Thaddeus Metz before you have a chance of maybe studying, say, ubuntu as a normative ethical theory.

It is not good enough for Makhanya to enter these debates, with his incredibly influential voice and pen as a seasoned journalist and respected editor, if he will enter the debates with no regard for fact and fiction.

That is unfair, and irresponsible journalism, since the effect is to silence student voices as childish and thoughtless.

The lack of knowledge Makhanya displays in his latest column entry is precisely the result of epistemic violence in the academy being normalised across society.

These issues are fundamentally about creating a more just society. It warrants a more serious discussion than his clickbait commentary.

McKaiser is an author and political commentator