TODAY’S YOUTH MUST CONTINUE THE STRUGGLE

THE world has been turned upside down by the Covid-19 global pandemic, the tyranny of police brutality in the US and the death of Collins Khosa and others who were under police custody here at home.

The way the world has been turned upside by all these debilitating issues has warped the imagination for some of us. Some of us are out of touch with reality to a point where we do not know what is to be done during this Youth Month.

Some of us have been consumed by this tyranny and moments of dystopia to a point where we are not even aware that this month is Youth Month. Following all these transgressions and injustices, I call upon all citizens to be strong and face these challenges head-on.

Students of higher learning institutions like myself also find themselves in limbo as they continue to struggle with online learning.

Learners in basic education find themselves in a crisis of decisionmaking: to choose to go to school and risk their lives, or not go at all and be safe. These are certainly not easy decisions to make. But not all is doomed. There is still hope. Just like the youth of 1976, today’s youth must find the courage to continue with the struggle for their education.

In this Youth Month, I think the youth of 2015 from the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements must reflect. I think as members of the fallist movement, we must ask ourselves if we have betrayed our struggle.

We must acknowledge that we managed to fight for insourcing of workers on our campus, to force government to reduce fee increment even though our call was for free decolonised quality education and to decolonise some of the colonial symbols in some of the historically white universities. They might appear minor but remain symbolic victories. However, more is to be done, particularly concerning the issue of decolonising the curriculum in both basic and higher education sectors respectively. One of our mistakes was to reduce the conversation and devote our energies to decolonise the curriculum in tertiary institutions and said nothing much about basic education.

Many scholars from Africa, Latin America and the diaspora problematise the insistence of university education and knowledge production to remain within the “colonial power matrix of modernity” as argued by Grosfoguel (2007, p. 217). Prof Ndlovu-Gatsheni describes the problematic of Western thought to be trapped in the “coloniality of knowledge” which is sustained by coloniality as a power structure.

Considering Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s point, one cannot help but to urge those who are committed to the idea of decolonising the curriculum, especially those that were in the fallist movement and are still part of the academy, to seriously think about various ways they can use the academy as a site of struggle to achieve the goal of decolonising the curriculum.

This could be done through their scholarly research and teaching and we can learn from the likes of Ndlovu-Gatsheni who taught at Unisa and Dr Lwazi Lushaba from UCT.

We can no longer allow the epistemic violence perpetrated by Western modernity which many of universities continue to perpetuate and maintain, structurally and otherwise.

Ours is a struggle of epistemic disobedience, as Walter Mignolo teaches us.

Indeed, the academy can be a site of struggle just as the streets are a site of resistance as those who have come before us have shown us.

I strongly believe that we can beat racism, police brutality and this pandemic using the academy as a site of struggle among other institutions to seek for equality and justice. And, as Biko once said: “It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die.” Aluta continua!