Joshua Amupadhi
SOUTH AFRICA’S youngest national student organisation believes it has discovered a pool of support among campus students weary of “struggle” politics. Oddly, for South Africa, it is a mainly white organisation with a black leader.
The South African Liberal Students’ Association (Salsa) promotes individualism, as opposed to collectivism. This, says its newly elected national president, Enoch Ngcongolo, is just what students need in the new political order.
Salsa, formed in November 1994, advocates liberalism of student politics by encouraging freedoms – of the individual, of expression, of association. “We believe you first have to heal the individual before you heal the society.” Ngcongolo maintains the forced collectivism of the liberation struggle is failing on campuses.
The fact that he is probably the first black to lead a mainly white student group, he adds, shows that liberalism pays no attention to colour, only the individual.
Ngcongolo (21), a second-year BComm student at Rhodes University, was elected to the organisation’s federal executive as vice- president less than six months after joining as a member.
He is a former member of the Congress of South African Students (Cosas), a secondary- school organisation whose members usually graduate to the South African Students’ Congress (Sasco). He became dissatisfied with the “irrational radicalism” of Cosas, Sasco and the African National Congress Youth League while at high school.
Ngcongolo says individualism and freedom of speech and association are becoming more appealing to students, who are tired of extremist campus politics. “We believe, for example, in redressing the imbalances of the past. We address issues affecting both blacks and whites, but we are steering a middle path on these common issues.”
Salsa is already digging into the support of established student groups only two years after its formation. It beat Sasco, the country’s largest student body, in the latest Student Representative Council elections at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Salsa has branches on 13 campuses, including the University of the Western Cape, University of Cape Town, University of Fort Hare, Rand Afrikaans University, University of the Orange Free State and three technical colleges in Norhern Province. This is a small feat compared to Sasco’s presence at 150 tertiary institutions.
On black campuses Salsa is often perceived as a “puppet” of the Democratic Party. “Some people don’t want to see us as a purely liberal student organisation,” says Ngcongolo. “We are not aligned to any political party whatsoever.”
The mistrust does not only come from outside the organisation. Ngcongolo admits that even within Salsa “cultural and racial” tensions exist. “There is a lack of trust from both sides, and I think that is because I am new in this position. It is not really a question of racism … We are also trying to do away with the belief that liberalism is a white thing.”