Students said they were warned: “If you aren’t with us, you’re against us, a sell-out”. There is an image by Marco Longari of incoming Student Representative Council (SRC) president Nompendulo Mkhatshwa, marching in the rain, head bowed and fists raised.
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I’m now convinced more than ever that you do not care about young people in this country. Then there’s the violence and resistance.
Student leaders imposed a media blackout.
Students protesting during a mass demonstration on the steps of Jameson Hall at the University of Cape Town, yesterday.
“On the basis of this, the academic programme must resume on Tuesday, 27 October 2015”.
“We do need this to come to an end”, Habib said. Wits will find the resources to support the children of employees’ study at the university, write a workers’ charter, and waive disciplinary action against those involved in legitimate forms of protest.
The Youth League also put out a statement in its own name the night before, articulating the demands of the students, which no other student organisation had done before.
National Shutdown Coalition leader Anele Nzimande said that a meeting on Sunday at Wits university’s Senate House‚ renamed Solomon Mahlangu House by students‚ had agreed that the protests should continue.
It didn’t go as planned. This proved unsatisfactory to the students waiting to be addressed at the Union Buildings. Exercising their democratic rights, they chose to enter the gates and within minutes, police began firing stun grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullets into the crowd of students.
Other student organisations were part of the protests. Sure, there were many who wanted the university to reopen and for exams to be held, but group decision making was overcome by allegations of subterfuge and one of the key elements of the movement, discussion, was subverted by force. To understand where the student protests came from and where they are going we must address the complicated racial politics that undergird the national debate on tuition fees. It is us, the youth of 2015 that has revived student activism in the broader discourse of society. This cultural chasm fuels the resentment of students who are struggling financially and is creating the explosive cocktail that we are now witnessing.
They are demanding free education for all and that universities stop the outsourcing of staff and services.
Numerous universities facing protests were white-only institutions under the apartheid regime.
“One needs time to regroup and strategise appropriately with effective tactics”.
The protests at universities across the country are bigger than Wits. For them, they could not be free without also recognising the oppression of those around them who were, for many, not so different from their mothers, brothers, fathers, and sisters. The rejection of respectability politics was something that not only profoundly linked these movements to Biko’s critique of white liberals and their elite inter-racial tea parties in the suburbs, but also to the students’ frustration with black members of management who were considered to be acting against, rather than for, genuine decolonisation and transformation.
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As protests across the country proceed, their success will depend on unity, tactics, and coordination across campuses.
