Over the past two weeks media representatives have, to an overwhelming degree, unconditionally aligned themselves with students as they rose up across the country.
The protests were romanticised and defended in equal measure as platform after platform united behind the drive to eradicate university fees entirely; at the very least to abolish any increase next year. “Victory,” was the cry, disseminated instantaneously in a thousand tweets, as President Jacob Zuma on Friday, in that now weary, emotionless, staccato manner for which he is synonymous, announced all increases would be permanently suspended. Everyone was a winner.
GroundUp carried this important story in the midst of the protests. “Protesters occupied Shoprite in Khayelitsha Mall this morning demanding a reduction in the price of bread,” it wrote. “The Shoprite store was closed this morning during the occupation. An eye witness told GroundUp the protesters were eventually escorted out of the store. Private security guards in bullet proof vests carrying rifles patrolled the area. The protesters came together under the social media hash tag #ThePriceOfBreadMustFall. They have expressed solidarity with protesters demanding lower university fees using the hashtag #FeesMustFall.”
But it is their subsequent analysis of the problem that is most telling. In a piece trying to explain why these protests mattered, Jane Battersby-Lennard wrote, “We are witnessing two neglected constitutional rights being rendered visible: the right to higher education and the right to food.”
The problem is not rights. The fact that they are being violated is a symptom. The problem is money – there is none.
The business that is South Africa makes no profit, but it spends and spends and spends. And if you think student protests about fees are disturbing in their intensity, if food protests start to take off in a significant way, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The past few years have been marked by a series of mini revolutions in South Africa — service delivery protests, wage negotiations, student fees. Really it is only apartheid geographic spacial planning and the lack of a single South African Tahir Square that seems to stop them all from coming together. But they are all symptoms. We remain, for the most part, blind to the real revolution.
The economy is the golden thread that joins them all together. If the problem is not arrested and the situation addressed, you get the sense it will arrive on our doorsteps to shock and disbelief. — Business Day
It’s still about the economy
The protests were romanticised and defended in equal measure as platform after platform united behind the drive to eradicate university fees entirely; at the very least to abolish any increase next year. “Victory,” was the cry, disseminated instantaneously in a thousand tweets, as President Jacob Zuma on Friday, in that now weary, emotionless, staccato manner for which he is synonymous, announced all increases would be permanently suspended. Everyone was a winner.
GroundUp carried this important story in the midst of the protests. “Protesters occupied Shoprite in Khayelitsha Mall this morning demanding a reduction in the price of bread,” it wrote. “The Shoprite store was closed this morning during the occupation. An eye witness told GroundUp the protesters were eventually escorted out of the store. Private security guards in bullet proof vests carrying rifles patrolled the area. The protesters came together under the social media hash tag #ThePriceOfBreadMustFall. They have expressed solidarity with protesters demanding lower university fees using the hashtag #FeesMustFall.”
But it is their subsequent analysis of the problem that is most telling. In a piece trying to explain why these protests mattered, Jane Battersby-Lennard wrote, “We are witnessing two neglected constitutional rights being rendered visible: the right to higher education and the right to food.”
The problem is not rights. The fact that they are being violated is a symptom. The problem is money – there is none.
The business that is South Africa makes no profit, but it spends and spends and spends. And if you think student protests about fees are disturbing in their intensity, if food protests start to take off in a significant way, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The past few years have been marked by a series of mini revolutions in South Africa — service delivery protests, wage negotiations, student fees. Really it is only apartheid geographic spacial planning and the lack of a single South African Tahir Square that seems to stop them all from coming together. But they are all symptoms. We remain, for the most part, blind to the real revolution.
The economy is the golden thread that joins them all together. If the problem is not arrested and the situation addressed, you get the sense it will arrive on our doorsteps to shock and disbelief. — Business Day
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