They have abandoned their ethics, and are being used to tame the students’ demands for economic justice for the majority, writes Sipho Singiswa.
As a former student leader in the 1976 uprisings, and as an ex-political prisoner and freedom fighter, I can no longer keep quiet about what I have witnessed over the past few months in terms of the interaction between so-called struggle stalwarts and the FeesMustFall movement.
In fact, I hang my head in despair as I watch these “stalwarts” willingly become part of the campaign to smash the student uprisings. It seems to me that these ex-liberation icons speak to students about how they too were in the struggle, how they liberated the country - and then, inevitably, end their speech by telling the students that they must only work within the ambit of the law.
What they fail to mention is that those who uphold the law itself trangress the rights of the students by shooting at them when they are exercising their constitutional right to protest. What they seemingly forget to mention is what was promised to the students’ parents in the form of the Freedom Charter, which of course never came to pass. It is as if they forget that the students’ call for access to free, equal, quality, decolonised education is premised on historical promises of the struggle movement.
This call is not unreasonable, and has been backed by non-partisan academic studies that conclude free quality education is possible in South Africa. The modalities differ according to persuasion, such as the introduction of a wealth tax, to realise such an education system.
The call for the “wealth tax” was first made by the TRC report. The ruling party first showed its true colours by objecting to the report, although for different reasons. It is not surprising that the white corporate sector, and the chattering class, object to the call for free education.
They hide behind dubious economics and concern for the rule of law. As such you hear them say: “But where is the money going to be found?; The students must protest within the ambit of the law.” This defeatist and ambiguous approach is not in sync with the students’ clarity.
Surely these struggle stalwarts can acknowledge publicly that the call for a free education is by no means unreasonable. Is it not clear to the neo-petite bourgeoisie with “liberation credentials” that all progressive countries with natural resources follow this practice. The resistance to the implementation of studied recommendations for free education is well-orchestrated. It comes largely from the self-serving white conservative population and corporate South Africa, in solidarity with racist members of the non-white minority communities.
It is compounded by the lack of political will from the compromised ruling party. The idea is to keep entrenched the profit-making, racially skewed and oppressive neo-liberal approach to education.
And the stalwarts, as far as I can tell, play right along with this, assisting in the delaying tactics to buy the unpopular privileged class time to compel the students into submitting to the neo-liberal system as an inevitable force that should not be tackled.
Suddenly the so-called struggle stalwarts’ who had long since abandoned their liberation struggle ethics in exchange for obscenely privileged lifestyles are rebooted out of political retirement to host corporate-sponsored events at which students are encouraged to focus on their academic studies above all else.
It seems to me that this false camaraderie with the FeesMustFall campaign is nothing more that the abuse of their struggle history as they have long stopped fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised.
Though the ruling party got its tenure by advocating egalitarian socialistic policies and a people-driven participatory democracy, when it won the majority support it opted for a pragmatic stance that is driven by neo-liberal values that favour self-enrichment, individualism and the bolstering of the Washington Consensus.
It chose to succumb to the pressure of the white corporate world and to allay white fears in return for minority shares in white-controlled business entities. Its co-option into the white cultural lifestyle reduced the stalwarts to a mere buffer zone between the elite and the disenfranchised majority. In the end, the ruling party itself has become a pawn for the white corporations’ economic global dominance project.
It is a spawning factory for Fanon’s new type of black bourgeoisie who speak from both sides of the mouth, and become an obstacle to the people’s struggle for socio-economic justice.
This is one of the key reasons why the envisaged post-1994 South African socio-economic transformation process ground to a halt before it began. It has created a huge disconnect between the capitalist “former stalwarts” (aka the new bourgeoisie) and the poor majority. As such, these shadowy stalwarts are used in the manner designed to tame the students’ demands for economic justice for the majority.
It is sad that the aspirant black bourgeoisie and struggle stalwarts are available to be used against the students. They are willing to be the ones to smooth over the abuse and terror meted out to students in October and to manufacture the idea that they still have their struggle credentials intact and thus will pacify the students.
It is a crying shame and downright hypocritical.
* Singiswa is a founder of Media for Justice, and an ex-Robben Islander and student leader from Gugulethu. He is currently making a feature documentary about the student uprisings.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Sunday Independent