Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Why 2016’s youth can learn from 40 years ago
THE TSHISIMANI Centre for Activist Education on Mowbray’s main road is not far from Community House in Salt River, where several new and established activist organisations are based, and the University of Cape Town, a vibrant centre of contemporary student activism from where the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall campaigns were launched.
South Africa is commemorating 40 years since the watershed student rebellions of 1976, which marked the beginning of intensifying the Struggle and, in the light of recent youth activism, there are moves to reflect on the lessons of 1976.
Phindile Kunene, a former student leader at Witswatersand University and one of the centre’s staff, said it was “necessary to draw on the narratives of the past” and this was an important part of the centre’s public education project.
“The ritualised and almost ceremonial marking of the critical events of 1976 cannot be the way we engage history, because there is a need to be relevant, specifically now because 2015 and 2016 have been pivotal years for student activism.”
She said part of the process involved inter- generational dia- logues “which are non-hierarchical and not easy discussions” where there was an “honest discussion of the key moments, setbacks and challenges”.
The centre facilitated a colloquium last week in which activist Zackie Achmat, who was a pupil at Salt River High in 1976, provided participants with a flavour of what happened in Cape Town that year. Social historian Cecil Esau, who was a second year UWC student, Geoffrey Mamputha, who was a student leader at Fezeka High, Yousuf Gabru, a teacher at Salt River High and Yalezwa Singiswa, a student at Sizamile Secondary and a political detainee in 1976, answered questions.
“From these reservoirs of knowledge we learn, grow and sharpen the tools of engagement,” Kunene said.