There’s a lot of truth to the view that the
most recent history is often the most difficult to unpack, precisely because we
don’t have enough distance from it to judge it clearly. It’s tangled up with
the present, and our subjectivity remains clouded while we move ahead into the
future. It’s understandable. But it is enormously frustrating to see how
dishonestly many have revised their histories in this short period of time.
Many, who were gripped by fear of that
archetypal trope of the Apartheid system – the black radical militant – and
feared black government and that South Africa would end up being another
post-liberation African tragedy, were highly sceptical about democracy. The African
National Congress (ANC) were widely viewed as radical black communist
terrorists who would take everything away from the middle classes. Even the
United Democratic Front (UDF) wasn’t viewed in a positive light by many.
The worker marches were typically depicted as
evidence of black communist radical militancy; every time a shop window was
broken during a march, or a few bricks were thrown, it was displayed as
evidence of the ever-present threat lurking just beneath the surface. This, in
large part, allowed for the use of disproportionate force to be levelled
against them, for death squads to operate, for “third forces” to do their work,
with the silent consent of South Africans.
Yet after liberation came, and the Madiba magic
did its work, many radically revised their views, and their own personal
histories with it. Many were very happy to include themselves amongst the previously
disadvantaged, because it meant they could grasp the low-hanging fruit that
opening up the economy and the institutions yielded. Affirmative action was
readily abused by those who had previously shied away from lending even the
faintest support to the struggle for liberation.
Some even reinvented themselves as long-time
ANC and struggle stalwarts; they made up imaginary pasts for themselves, with
themselves playing central roles in the struggle for liberation. Many joined the ANC,
or associated themselves with it, as it became clearer that where power
resided, there were great benefits to be obtained. They are, in part,
responsible for the pathetic state of the ANC today. They infected it with
their apathy, their conservatism, and their indifference to the plight of those
who really suffered under Apartheid, and continued to suffer under the new
system.
Over time, those activists who had once been
regarded as misguided and radical, became the centre-piece of the stories that
their families and friends – who had not themselves supported the struggle for
liberation – retold as evidence of their association and involvement in the
struggle. Nowadays, everyone has a struggle story to tell in South Africa, yet
when it counted their voices were silent. When they raised their voices it was
to express their fears of radical black militancy.
So perhaps it should come as no surprise that,
once again, the fears of radical black militants has come to dominate the
public conversation on the student protest actions. And it is being
uncritically echoed, without adequate reflection on what is actually unfolding
in South African society, and the responses are needed.
Protest is about civil disobedience; it is
about disrupting the status quo. It does not have to be violent, but it has to
assert power. Sit-ins, marches, building occupations, etc. are not violent,
radical forms protest that require stun grenades and rubber bullets – they are
disruptive, but that’s what civil disobedience is. It disrupts the normal
functions of society. In doing so, it exerts power on the society and
institutions it seeks to challenge and bring to the negotiating table.
When society, its institutions and governments
fail to deliver on their democratically awarded mandates, and systematically
silence and ignore their constituencies, disrupting the everyday procession of
the functions, activities and processes that uphold the establishment is an
entirely valid form of protest. Protests do not erupt overnight; they may
appear to, and may be represented by the media as explosions of discontent, but
they more often than not involve a fair amount of frustration with the bureaucratic
channels that are available to activists who seek restitution, justice and fair
treatment. Rarely do protests emerge as the madness of the mob does; they are
not the same thing. Mob behaviour might infect protest actions, but they are
not the cause of it.
The inability to make this distinction between
activists embarking on protest, and mob behaviour, is perhaps the greatest
obstacle to understanding the plight of protesters. This is no less the case in
South Africa, whether historically, or in this present moment, where student
protests have brought universities and higher education institutions to a
standstill.
The ever-resident spectre of the radical black
militant – a dehumanising trope that has its roots in settler fears of the
anti-colonial struggles of liberation movements – has never truly been overcome
by the majority of the ruling classes in postcolonial Africa. It relegates black Africans to the extreme end
of the dichotomy that was ascribed to black subaltern existence, that is; a
dichotomy between the submissive smiling, laughing, ever-agreeing, docile native
on the one hand, and the scurrilous, untrustworthy, rebellious savage on the
other.
In 2015, it is difficult to stomach the
thoughtless reproduction of the characterisation of young student protesters as
disrespectful ‘angry blacks’ who have no respect for the rule of law, or even
the education they are fighting for. Yet it has been widely reproduced in the
media, as well as on social media. There are scarcely any attempts to
contextualise the protests of South African students and youth in terms of
their colonial, Apartheid and post-Apartheid histories, nor has there been any
attempt to contextualise it in terms of the global movement for change in the
higher education sector.
Protest actions are never neatly implemented;
they are complex and difficult to control. That is the nature of protest
action; it is unpredictable. Eruptions of conflict, intimidation and violence,
while regrettable, do not distract from the validity of a political cause that
is directed against injustice, or a morally and principally bankrupt
socio-political compact that is not serving society, or the majority of its
members.
Thus far, there has been no loss of life as a
direct result of violent action, either by the police or by protesters. Two
events stand out; the alleged rape of a UKZN student by a policeman and the
death of a worker who suffered respiratory failure (there are conflicting
accounts about the cause of death; some attributing the workers death to the
use of teargas, and others attributing it to the release of fire extinguishers
by protesting students). These events have featured far less in the conversations
around intimidation and violence, presumably because they are not as important
as the overblown imaginary that stalks middle class – and especially white –
South Africa, that of the unreasonable and violent radical black militant.
So it is extremely ironic that while South
Africans now all award a great reverence to the generation of scholars and students
who shook up the system in the 1970s (including those who died in the June 16th
massacre of 1976), that they forget how these very same people were regarded by
South African society back then. That is, they were widely viewed – by those in
power then – as black radical militants who were deserving of state army and
police crackdowns, banning orders, victimisation, extra-judicial killings and
the like.
More recently, in the build-up to the largest
state massacre in post-Apartheid democratic South Africa – that of the Marikana
workers in August 2012 – the very same archetype was invoked to bring
disproportionate force to bear on the workers. In the case of Marikana, the
killing of four miners, two police officers and two security guards preceded
the massacre, and was used as a rationale for a large-scale police crackdown.
Very few now remember that a particular set of logics was resident in the
decision-making that led to the unwarranted confrontation with mineworkers, who
contained on a hill-site, posed no threat to property, mine personnel or
anybody else. Yet it was clear, the day before the confrontation occurred, that
the police had been instructed to take drastic action to remove the workers.
As a nation, we have short memories. For the
very same set of logics are currently being deployed by the institutions of
higher education, the media and the government in this current moment. The police
commissioner promised a crackdown on students in a Friday interview on
television. It is clear, that the justification to mobilise disproportionate
force to crush the student rebellion is being insidiously manufactured. The
tone is that they ‘need to be taught a lesson’. Yet despite damage to property
(a few buildings were set on fire), and some inconveniences and disruptions (blocking
roads onto campus’s, disrupting lectures), the protests have not resulted in any
deaths.
Most often they were peaceful until private
security intervened, or the police intervened, often using stun grenades, tear
gas and rubber bullets to prevent building occupations and sit-ins. This in
itself is unconscionable, sit-ins and building occupations are disruptive, but
they are essentially peaceful forms of protest. They should not be met with
force; they should be met with prolonged engagement and dialogue. Force is sure
to escalate this situation and guarantee that normal functioning of
universities will take even longer than anticipated.
Shutting down the university system, with all
its consequences, lies at the heart of the protesters strategy to force
government to show leadership on the critical challenges facing the higher
education sector. It is not the end of the world; students have long
end-of-year holidays (3 months) and often rewrite examinations over that period
when they have marginally failed (i.e. supplementary examinations). Rigid university
bureaucracies will have to work harder to solve the administrative crisis that
has been brought about; but this is not a crisis that requires the use of
extreme force to resolve. It requires institutional and political commitments,
and no more delays in pronouncing those commitments.
Should the student protesters win these commitments,
and initiate the most revolutionary changes that have as yet unfolded in
post-Apartheid South Africa, it will set the tone and foundations for building
a new society; a radical revision of the state. For the majority, who have been
excluded from power and access to the privileges enjoyed by the middle classes
and the elite, it would be a seismic shift into a new people-centred democracy,
where priorities are assigned outside of the prevailing neoliberal system and
state. With the highest inequality in the world (according to the World Bank),
South Africa desperately needs to embark upon a new trajectory; this moment
might well lead to that.
When the transition to democracy had been
safely achieved, those who were sceptical of it became the ones who later pronounced
their enduring devotion to it the loudest. They would have you believe that
they risked life and limb for it. So this time round, I can safely predict that
after a decade has passed, there will be another radical revision of personal
histories in South Africa, depending on which way the wind blows over the next
decade.
And so it will be up to a few of us to remind
South Africans, that they were the very same society that did nothing when the June
16th massacre took place in 1976 (it took 18 years before liberation
was won), and when the government was artificially inflating the Marikana crisis
in preparation for a confrontation. That
they in fact fed into, legitimised and exacerbated the capacity for state
violence by virtue of their inability to move beyond their fears of a powerful
imaginary, one that resides deep within the subconscious of South African
society; that of the radical black militant. That they need to be reminded that
for all their cries of “never again”, they are the ones who in fact ensure that
history repeats itself with impunity.
First posted: 8/10/2016
Revised: 12/10/2016
First posted: 8/10/2016
Revised: 12/10/2016
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