Politics and Society
South Africa’s student resolution: #FeesMustFall
This past week, the ANC was dealing with its biggest jolt since it came to power in 1994. With little more than a hashtag, #FeesMustFall, and a lot of healthy outrage, tens of thousands of students across the country and across race and party lines rose up, shut down campuses and stopped examinations, then marched on Parliament and Luthuli House and left the lawns of the Union Buildings smouldering.
Echoes of the Arab spring and shades of the youth rebellion of 1976, when students set the nation alight protesting unpopular educational policy, could not help but come to mind. There was even a solidarity protest outside South Africa House, London – for decades the site of anti-apartheid pickets.
The speed with which the demonstrations spread, the ease with which they were co-ordinated, the overall discipline, courage and maturity of the protestors caught the government and the ANC completely on the back foot. Just days before, Minister for Higher Education was bragging on camera that if the students didn’t accept a 6% increase, government would start its own Students Must Fall movement. It is hard to imagine a more inappropriate and offensive joke for the cabinet member in charge of student educational wellbeing to make as police prepared to use tazers and fire teargas and rubber bullets.
Photo: Imraan Christian
There ought to be panic in ANC headquarters; the age band 18 to 29 holds 36% of all eligible voters of which 5.6 million (23% of all voters) were registered in 2013. Small wonder then that every political party in the country fell over themselves to hijack, co-opt or align their views with the #FeesMustFall movement.
Photo: Imraan Christian
The so called “born-frees” – a label anyone actually from that generation scorns as they know all too well they were not born free after 1994, but in the deep shadow of apartheid – have no liberation sentiment about the ANC. To decide their vote, all they have to go on is 21-years of a disappointing, scandal-ridden, self-enriching and increasingly tone-deaf government that has made untold extravagant and empty promises.
The yawning gap between the younger generation and the ANC leadership has actually been a problem since before it even came to power, and the party has utterly failed to rectify the situation. In fact, it has only made things worse, by jettisoning its most charismatic youth leaguers (which have now become the unofficial opposition in parliament under Julius Malema) and replacing them with toadies, leaving a power vacuum.
Photo: Imraan Christian
Campus politics have become unpredictable. In May, the unthinkable Democratic Alliance Student Organisation won the SRC elections at the University of Fort Hare, a cornerstone of ANC heritage.
#FeesMustFall, like its precursor #RhodesMustFall, is not a revolution (at least not yet), but it brought government to heel, at least to all appearances. It is also a pyrrhic victory for those whose exams were disrupted and who have already terminated accommodation and made their transport arrangements to return home. No one can afford economic liberation before education.
The Minister can squirm and dodge all he wants, but government policy contradicting its promises is largely what precipitated the fees crisis. Data shows that the treasury has steadily withdrawn subsidy support for students, contributing less and less to the rapidly rising costs of education per student, and expecting them to make up the difference. Had the increases gone through next year, the cost of education fees would have doubled since 2008.
Photo: Imraan Christian
President Zuma was happy to be the one to stand before the crowds and announce a 0% increase, yet another bribe from the ANC that will cost the party nothing, is highly likely to be mangled in the actual workings of government, and will most probably leave universities scrambling for funds next year.
The ANC has been adept at playing good cop, bad cop, swopping hats as government and then as party, taking credit for its successes, distancing itself from its failures, and for the rest merging party and state for its coffers. It will most likely blame the universities themselves and capitalism, and may even use the protests as an opportunity to further curb academic freedom.
Photo: Imraan Christian
South Africa has the extraordinary phenomenon of a government that regularly marches against itself. The ANC takes to the streets protesting against its own policy implementation. But the ruse is beginning to wear thin. What we have seen elsewhere in the world has just begun to emerge now in South Africa; a vocal, political class without a party home. The revolution may well still come, and if South Africa is lucky, it will be through the ballot box.
