The result of a bad political education
FRANTZ Fanon said: “To educate the masses politically does not mean making a political speech.
“What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses everything depends on them; that if we stagnate, it is their responsibility; that if we go forward, it is due to them too; that there is no such thing as a demiurge, there is no famous man who will take responsibility for everything, but that the demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands only the hands of the people.”
Political education since the mid-1980s has been a “relentless and passionate” teaching that everything depends on the “liberation movement” (ANC or tripartitie alliance), whether it be houses, jobs or grants and the masses must never think anything depends on themselves. They have been taught there is a “famous man who will take responsibility for everything”.
The situation in universities reflects chickens coming home to roost.
Students display lack of confidence in the government. Societies are structured such that there is authority. Social cohesion is dependent on respect for different roles. There are ways to pressure those in authority you believe in, such as parents in a family.
You try to understand they may not be capable of meeting all your needs or doing so instantly. But you are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and trust that inability to meet the need is not because they do not want to but because they are genuinely under-resourced.
Where there is trust, there is the tendency to be reasonable.
The behaviour of students appears more a show of brute strength than a goal-orientated activity. This is a result of bad political education.
Their understanding of heroism is based on their pedestrian comprehension of the struggle against apartheid.
In the 1970s, students acted knowing well they lived under a government they had no claim to, that had no interest in their welfare and that they had no legal means to remove.
Students seem not to be aware that in a democracy, if those elected do not do what the electorate expects, they get removed by not voting for them. This is the main difference between the apartheid era and now.
Furthermore, in 1976, the burning of bottle stores in the township had a clear strategy – destroying what was seen as a weapon to turn Africans into alcoholics. The township municipal offices were burnt because influx control was managed from them, the objective being to cripple the apartheid machinery, and the action yielded results.
But the students take their cue from the mid-1980s when apartheid had been diluted and there was no strategy to upset the regime unless you regard “rendering the country ungovernable” a strategy.
Africans were killing each other while claiming to be fighting the regime. Looking at what is happening now, we elected a government to ren- der the country ungovernable.
Post 1994, you do not need to burn tyres, buildings or attack others; you have a vote to give your mandate to those who will use your taxes effectively for the development of society as a whole which may well make no-fees a reality.
It will take more than jumping about with placards or the destruction of infrastructure to get “free” education.
Only the will to select with circumspection those we mandate to run our affairs will open the way forward. Dr Kenosi Mosalakae