THE #FeesMustFall movement, with its call for “free de-colonial education”, has been portrayed as senseless hooliganism, and is thus perceived in some quarters as a potential threat, not only to universities and education in South Africa, but also to the state itself.
The ANC government understands that #FeesMustFall is loaded with revolutionary potential and so deals with students as any neo-colonialist regime would respond to a perceived threat to its legitimacy.
Aware of historical revolutions, especially on the African continent, the government appears to locate #FeesMustFall within the ambit of treason and mutiny and has hallucinatory imaginations of third-force conspiracies.
Many socio-economic and political revolutions in the process of history-making have been led and championed by young people – including students who understand their contemporary struggles and oppressions through the study of revolutionary literature, as well as their own personal experiences.
Black youth and students have historically ushered in new ideas, new dispensations and revolutions.
Most of the traditional African liberation movements and guerrilla armies that waged war against white supremacist colonialist regimes in Africa were comprised largely of young black people and students who sacrificed their lives for the ideas of freedom they believed in.
After independence in many African states, young people and students were again jointly at the forefront of agitation, protests and revolts against the new neo-colonial regimes which continued to function as appendages of their former white oppressors.
These new neo-colonial regimes were also administrated by former liberation fighters – mostly men – who formed arrogant, power-hungry elites and shut their ears to the cries and aspirations of the people.
In the former French colonies of Algeria and Tunisia, student movements continued with radical and militant actions following the violent repression of the revolutionary movements between 1947 and 1950 – years of bloody massacres, violent riots, political assassinations and incarcerations.
In Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), young graduates returning home from French universities formed youth wings of their movement across the country and began to attack the government’s economic policies which they viewed as conservative.
They accused the president Félix Houphouët-Boigny of being a puppet of French neo-colonial and business interests.
This student action and rumours of anti-government conspiracies in Cote d’Ivoire saw the state build up a 6000-strong, well-armed military force to guard against a civil or student uprising or even a coup.
Through the use of violent force, Houphouet-Boigny contained the student protests of 1968.
Again in Cote d’Ivoire, the youth and students were at the centre of the upheaval that gripped the country after the October 2010 national elections results were contested. University spaces became sites of struggle as tensions increased between the pro-Gbagbo and pro-Outtara supporters.
A number of universities including those in the cities of Abijan, Daloa and Korhogo, were forced to shut down indefinitely, while others were transformed into military training zones and camps.
In Kenya student protest action began before Kenya even became independent in 1961, when students protested against being addressed by a white colonial officer.
They did so again in 1965 when the US bombed villages in Uganda, taking to the streets in protests which were characterised as “violent”.
Such protests continued through the 1970s into the 1980s against Britain’s hanging of Africans in the then Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), the Kenyan government gagging Oginga Odianga from addressing students and the mysterious deaths of prominent political leaders, Josiah Mwangi Kariuki and Robert Ouko.
In Senegal, throughout the 1970s and 1980s the University of Dakar earned a reputation as a hotbed of revolutionary politics due to student agitation, acute revolutionary articulation and protests.
In Uganda, students at Makerere University were largely influenced by anti-colonial and Pan-Africanist revolutions on the continent in the 1960s.
The same Makerere students also planned the initial rebellion that ultimately led to the ousting of Idi Amin.
In Ethiopia, the political actions and relentless campaigns of student movements eventually led to the coup and overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1974 .
It was students who revolted and rendered universities ungovernable, so helping to cultivate the grounds for a takeover of state power by the armed forces of the Soviet-backed Marxist–Leninist Dergue led by Mengistu Haile Mariam.
The same Ethiopian student movement, as well as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party, later led the revolution against Mengistu’s ruthless military dictatorship, resulting in a takeover by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in May 1991.
In South Africa after the banning of the ANC and PAC in 1960 students formed the South African Student Origination (SASO) in 1968 which developed and advanced the philosophy of Black Consciousness.
Many of these “nameless” and “unknown” black students were pivotal in bringing apartheid to a standstill, through protests, stay-aways and boycotts, causing numerous states of emergencies throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Many were detained, imprisoned, banned, kidnapped, tortured and/or killed. They were labelled criminals, terrorists and inciters by the apartheid state. Many fled into exile and never returned. Some died at home.
More recently, young people and students were central in leading radical protests that led to both the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions (Arab Spring) that resulted in the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi and President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.
In all of the above cases, governments rounded up members of student and youth movements, with the security forces using maximum force and violence – rubber bullets, live ammunition, threats, infiltration, torture and arrests. The authorities also sought to create division and mistrust within student and youth ranks.
It is against this historical background that we must view the violent response of the ANC-led government to black students calling for #FeesMustFall and #FreeDecolonisedEducation.
When the Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande, and the Acting National Police Commissioner, Lieutenant-General Khomotso Phahlane, speak of a mythical “third force” taking over the student movement and state that “student’s actions amount to an attack on the state” it would seem that the intention is to construct a pretext for justifying state violence against students.
Black students are part of the broader society and their struggles are not isolated from the general and daily struggles of their communities which manifest as so-called service delivery protests and labour dispute strikes.
The #FeesMustFall movement is not merely about the issue of high tertiary fees and fee increments in universities, but speaks to broader issues of content of curricular, episteme, socio-economic inequalities, structural racism, neo-colonialism and the perpetual land dispossession of black people.
#FeesMustFall is a critique of the whole socio-economic and political order under the ANC regime; it exposes the arrogance and complicity of the government in the continued oppression of black people and the repression of their aspirations.
#FeesMustFall speaks to the generational dehumanisation of black people through a Eurocentric educational system and racist curricular designed to enslave and colonise black minds.
Students have been brutalised by police and so-called private securities. But they are resolute and are not backing down. With many interdicted, suspended indefinitely, expelled, imprisoned and excluded, students have nothing to lose.
The most critical question now is whether those in the #FeesMustFall movement will do the necessary community work required to wage a total revolution.
Time and history will tell.
Thando Sipuye is an executive member of The Ankh Foundation and the Africentrik Study Group at the University of Sobukwe (Fort Hare). He is currently a post-graduate History Masters candidate at the Govan Mbeki Research and Development Centre under the South African Research Chairs Initiative at the University of Sobukwe. He writes in his personal capacity
OPINION: Students’ historic liberation role
The ANC government understands that #FeesMustFall is loaded with revolutionary potential and so deals with students as any neo-colonialist regime would respond to a perceived threat to its legitimacy.
Aware of historical revolutions, especially on the African continent, the government appears to locate #FeesMustFall within the ambit of treason and mutiny and has hallucinatory imaginations of third-force conspiracies.
Many socio-economic and political revolutions in the process of history-making have been led and championed by young people – including students who understand their contemporary struggles and oppressions through the study of revolutionary literature, as well as their own personal experiences.
Black youth and students have historically ushered in new ideas, new dispensations and revolutions.
Most of the traditional African liberation movements and guerrilla armies that waged war against white supremacist colonialist regimes in Africa were comprised largely of young black people and students who sacrificed their lives for the ideas of freedom they believed in.
After independence in many African states, young people and students were again jointly at the forefront of agitation, protests and revolts against the new neo-colonial regimes which continued to function as appendages of their former white oppressors.
These new neo-colonial regimes were also administrated by former liberation fighters – mostly men – who formed arrogant, power-hungry elites and shut their ears to the cries and aspirations of the people.
In the former French colonies of Algeria and Tunisia, student movements continued with radical and militant actions following the violent repression of the revolutionary movements between 1947 and 1950 – years of bloody massacres, violent riots, political assassinations and incarcerations.
In Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), young graduates returning home from French universities formed youth wings of their movement across the country and began to attack the government’s economic policies which they viewed as conservative.
They accused the president Félix Houphouët-Boigny of being a puppet of French neo-colonial and business interests.
This student action and rumours of anti-government conspiracies in Cote d’Ivoire saw the state build up a 6000-strong, well-armed military force to guard against a civil or student uprising or even a coup.
Through the use of violent force, Houphouet-Boigny contained the student protests of 1968.
Again in Cote d’Ivoire, the youth and students were at the centre of the upheaval that gripped the country after the October 2010 national elections results were contested. University spaces became sites of struggle as tensions increased between the pro-Gbagbo and pro-Outtara supporters.
A number of universities including those in the cities of Abijan, Daloa and Korhogo, were forced to shut down indefinitely, while others were transformed into military training zones and camps.
In Kenya student protest action began before Kenya even became independent in 1961, when students protested against being addressed by a white colonial officer.
They did so again in 1965 when the US bombed villages in Uganda, taking to the streets in protests which were characterised as “violent”.
Such protests continued through the 1970s into the 1980s against Britain’s hanging of Africans in the then Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), the Kenyan government gagging Oginga Odianga from addressing students and the mysterious deaths of prominent political leaders, Josiah Mwangi Kariuki and Robert Ouko.
In Senegal, throughout the 1970s and 1980s the University of Dakar earned a reputation as a hotbed of revolutionary politics due to student agitation, acute revolutionary articulation and protests.
In Uganda, students at Makerere University were largely influenced by anti-colonial and Pan-Africanist revolutions on the continent in the 1960s.
The same Makerere students also planned the initial rebellion that ultimately led to the ousting of Idi Amin.
In Ethiopia, the political actions and relentless campaigns of student movements eventually led to the coup and overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1974 .
It was students who revolted and rendered universities ungovernable, so helping to cultivate the grounds for a takeover of state power by the armed forces of the Soviet-backed Marxist–Leninist Dergue led by Mengistu Haile Mariam.
The same Ethiopian student movement, as well as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party, later led the revolution against Mengistu’s ruthless military dictatorship, resulting in a takeover by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in May 1991.
In South Africa after the banning of the ANC and PAC in 1960 students formed the South African Student Origination (SASO) in 1968 which developed and advanced the philosophy of Black Consciousness.
Many of these “nameless” and “unknown” black students were pivotal in bringing apartheid to a standstill, through protests, stay-aways and boycotts, causing numerous states of emergencies throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Many were detained, imprisoned, banned, kidnapped, tortured and/or killed. They were labelled criminals, terrorists and inciters by the apartheid state. Many fled into exile and never returned. Some died at home.
More recently, young people and students were central in leading radical protests that led to both the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions (Arab Spring) that resulted in the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi and President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.
In all of the above cases, governments rounded up members of student and youth movements, with the security forces using maximum force and violence – rubber bullets, live ammunition, threats, infiltration, torture and arrests. The authorities also sought to create division and mistrust within student and youth ranks.
It is against this historical background that we must view the violent response of the ANC-led government to black students calling for #FeesMustFall and #FreeDecolonisedEducation.
When the Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande, and the Acting National Police Commissioner, Lieutenant-General Khomotso Phahlane, speak of a mythical “third force” taking over the student movement and state that “student’s actions amount to an attack on the state” it would seem that the intention is to construct a pretext for justifying state violence against students.
Black students are part of the broader society and their struggles are not isolated from the general and daily struggles of their communities which manifest as so-called service delivery protests and labour dispute strikes.
The #FeesMustFall movement is not merely about the issue of high tertiary fees and fee increments in universities, but speaks to broader issues of content of curricular, episteme, socio-economic inequalities, structural racism, neo-colonialism and the perpetual land dispossession of black people.
#FeesMustFall is a critique of the whole socio-economic and political order under the ANC regime; it exposes the arrogance and complicity of the government in the continued oppression of black people and the repression of their aspirations.
#FeesMustFall speaks to the generational dehumanisation of black people through a Eurocentric educational system and racist curricular designed to enslave and colonise black minds.
Students have been brutalised by police and so-called private securities. But they are resolute and are not backing down. With many interdicted, suspended indefinitely, expelled, imprisoned and excluded, students have nothing to lose.
The most critical question now is whether those in the #FeesMustFall movement will do the necessary community work required to wage a total revolution.
Time and history will tell.
Thando Sipuye is an executive member of The Ankh Foundation and the Africentrik Study Group at the University of Sobukwe (Fort Hare). He is currently a post-graduate History Masters candidate at the Govan Mbeki Research and Development Centre under the South African Research Chairs Initiative at the University of Sobukwe. He writes in his personal capacity
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