Universities of 1976

“…I am frightened, dreadfully frightened, that we may soon reach a point of no return, when events will generate a momentum of their own, when nothing will stop their reaching a bloody denouement which is ‘too ghastly to contemplate’…”

With these words Mphilo Tutu, then Bishop of Johannesburg, implored the then-Prime Minister to lead South Africa into a better dispensation. The letter had been written to Vorster on 8 May 1976. Today we mark the 40^th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising; killings and violence that could have been averted had the authorities heeded Tutu’s words.

Today, 40 years after Tutu’s letter, our university campuses are on a knife edge. One shudders to think that 22 years into our democracy something as horrible as Soweto could happen again. Yet the situation is volatile. Like the students of 1976, our students are angry. Not necessarily against our government but against a system that has not changed much in democratic years.

Many hailed the protests of last October but very few realized that our campuses would never be the same again. People such as Patrick Bond and Shauna Mottair have written on the inevitable link between the endowment of human rights, especially the socio-economic ones, the “rights-talk” environment this creates and the growing demands of South Africans, especially by those who are marginalised.

It is only natural then that students who come into a university community, become conscious of their rights, start to question gross inequalities, structural injustices and the, often, patriarchal and racist responses from our universities’ management.

The anger of our students was palatable at Wits at the beginning of the year, during the #RuReferenceList at Rhodes and the recent occurrences as UCT. Professor Xolela Mangcu joins Dr Sizwe Mabizela and Professor Jonathan Jansen, to mention but two, in being screamed at, insulted, threatened and publically degraded. Our students, like those of 1976, are angry.

Ironically, one may suggest that Mangcu, Mabizela and Jansen come from that generation of ’76. What would they have wanted the then authorities to do? History has taught us that the students demands were against Bantu education and being forced to learn in Afrikaans, among others. But let us imagine for a moment, how they would have articulated those demands.

Maybe firstly to be recognised; as a person. Maybe the students would have wanted to sit down with Vorster and insist on addressing their demands to him directly. Maybe they would have suggested what, who and how they wanted to learn and hear more about in the curriculum. They wanted a transformed education system in South Africa.

Forty years later, our education system has somewhat transformed. It is safe to say that more Black children have gone to university in the last 22 years than ever in this country’s history. Billions of Rands are spent every year both on basic and higher education. No one should doubt our government’s firm determination and commitment to prioritize education and skills development. But somewhere something is going wrong.

While the state can fund, it cannot build the necessary academic environment needed on a university campus. However much it facilitates a research economy, the government cannot develop that pivotal relationship that must exist between academic and student for the production of knowledge. The state resorts to police; university communities, as loci of thought and creativity, must build for themselves social compacts. If one had a socialist state though all of this would be very different.

Instead, like Apartheid South Africa, our universities’ management have responded with the law. Interdicts have been imposed on a number of our campuses around the country; a false sense of security as Apartheid laws were. All interdicts do is put the lid on the pressure cooker. Its attempts to smother, to choke and to suffocate. Yet, as in the South Africa of June 1976, the pressure is building up.

Twice in its history South Africa has had a glimpse of the future it seeks to achieve; what a transformed South Africa looks like. The first was in Kliptown in 1955 and the second was at CODESA in the 1990’s.

Both the Congress of the People and the Convention of a Democratic South Africa brought together South Africans from all walks of life and allowed for all constituencies to sit down together, without the mighty arm of the law hanging over them, to create a new South Africa and forge a social compact.

The Congress of the People led to Sharpeville and eventually Soweto because those who had the power to change the course of history refused to sit down and negotiate with their adversaries. Today we are in the same position. We have interdicts instead of interaction. All, we can do at this stage sadly, is hope that our universities’ management will remember Tutu’s words: Blacks are exceedingly patient and peace loving.