Philippa Garson
PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela’s gentle but persistent finger-wagging at student organisations has met with reluctant nods in some quarters and outright rejection of the “Madiba magic” in others.
But his moves have clearly signalled that the romantic liaison between the African National Congress and its campus foot soldiers is coming to an end. The ANC, as the governing party, now reacts to civil disobedience with veiled panic rather than warm applause.
Student organisations, in growing confusion and disorganisation at having to fight a smaller foe in institutional managements and not “the enemy state”, have turned inward, choking on their anger at a government which, though supported by them, has yet to reward them.
Worried about the potential flight of capital from our traumatised institutions of higher learning, Mandela has called students to order, warning that the destruction of property will be met with police action, while acknowledging with trademark diplomacy the seriousness of their problems.
But he is not “calling to order” a disciplined mass of loyal students steeped in organisational politics.
Today’s students mobilise in swift protest around their own “bread and butter” issues of fees and exams but remain disorganised and dislocated from wider social goals. And their protest has turned uglier. The gentle banner-waving marches of multi- hued students have been replaced by unco-ordinated action and campus trashing by black students, sometimes pitted against whites.
The rest are a “careerist” bunch, as one student leader put it. Those who can afford to, get on with their studies without much regard for the community around them. Many of them, graduates of Model C schools are the “Pepsi generation” — individualists at home in traditionally white institutions. And white students — except the rightwingers — have all but vanished from the political scene.
But the first group is the thorn in the side of government and the ANC clearly perceives the danger in the growing distance between itself and those in the charging lines of today’s messy form of student protest.
While they may be laughed off as the “Azanian Fraternity”, as some students refer to the increasingly vocal, if numerically small, Azanian Students Congress and Pan Africanist Student Organisation, the government is keenly aware that in the mass of disillusioned students these organisations may find a potential support base.
ANC Youth League national president Malusi Gigaba alludes to this concern, saying his organisation “has committed errors in not taking effective leadership of students to ensure that students demands don’t get hijacked by people shouting high- sounding revolutionary slogans”.
Steps are being taken, he says, “to recreate the organic link between the ANC and the student movement”. This won’t be easy in today’s climate where the student profile has radically changed. “The large majority of them have not been involved in community struggle before,” he says.
“In the past, the struggles were also about bread- and-butter issues but there was a sense of connection with the broader community struggles. I hardly think the students are making this connection at the moment. If they did, they would know that to achieve their demands they have to struggle in a way that mobilises the sympathy of the public as a whole,” says Gigaba, slating the campus trashing.
“We were part of the struggles against apartheid. But at no stage in our protest action did we vandalise those ivory towers. Violence did not become a substitute for struggle.”
Meanwhile, Paso president Ignatius Molapo emerged from a meeting with Mandela this week unimpressed with “Madiba magic”. Students, he says, have been “co-opted by the neo-liberal system of negotiation and dialogue” but the government has not helped them develop the tools for this new terrain.
“We are sick of being told things are in the pipeline. People are talking big, employing consultants, making money, but nothing has changed for the ordinary people.”
He cites the “beginning of a phase of government clampdown on student activism” and his response to the likelihood of more police activity on campus is fierce. “We will fight the police. We have fought them many times. This is not a new terrain for students,” he says, adding that “it is very difficult” to stop students from trashing campuses when they don’t feel a part of them.
It may be left to the radical left in Paso and Azasco to voice outright opposition to the government’s “failure to deliver higher education” and Mandela’s threat to bring police on campus.
But Sasco, while aligned to the ANC, appears increasingly uncomfortable with its “yes, Mr President” role.
And this is not surprising, since it risks losing support from an increasingly disaffected section of the population who is not in the mood to stand up and sing praise songs to the government.
“We won’t toe the government line. Our duty as the student movement is to be critical of the government, including a government we have elected. But we will continue to support social and political movements which voice the same concerns we have,” says Sasco president David Makhuru.
But Sasco, the largest student organisation, is impatient at the perceived lack of support from government over its financial woes and fights with conservative university and technikon administrations. “We’ve been fighting these battles on our own. The ministry has been standing far away from this,” says Makhuru.
He admits to problems in the student movement, but pleads for mercy. “If we are to be judged as a weak student movement, we must be judged by different criteria.” Today’s times demand negotiation and leadership skills from students, not the rather easier skills of protest. “In the past it was fine to shout slogans,” he says.
Does the chord of disharmony struck between government and student groups signal the start of a government clampdown on student protest and withering of student activism as has happened in many other African and Latin American countries after independence?
“This might happen in South Africa,” says Makhuru. “But we are optimistic that the democratic movement is strong enough to resist it.” Makhuru does not discount a future scenario where the “imperatives of economic growth force the government to clamp down on labour and student movements.”