Victims of an abandoned struggle

TODAY’S generation of student leaders has achieved goals generations of leaders could not between 1940 and 1994.

Free quality education has always been part of our liberation struggle, particularly for those of us from socialist-inclined movements.

During our time as student leaders, black student-worker solidarity was put into practice. In many of our battles with then technikons, universities and colleges, it was almost compulsory for student leaders to ensure workers from the institution, political parties, civic organisations, professional bodies and youth formations from local communities were consulted.

Friday’s public meeting by Wits and University of Johannesburg academics to discuss the education crisis was a step in the right direction.

Our campus battles were not divorced from the overall struggle project which is why in some cases it was easier for us to enlist the services of organisations such as the Black Lawyers Association, National Education Co-ordination Committee, SA Council of Churches, Institute for a Democratic Alternative for SA and others supporting the education of black children.

Thus, student representative councils must ensure they are led by students with students’ interests at heart plus the ability to link the student struggle to the broader unfinished liberation struggle.

Students are merely victims of that abandoned struggle. Lesego Sechaba Mogotsi Pretoria