campuses
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni
The African National Congress’s main student ally, the South African Student Congress (Sasco), is losing its grip on campuses across the country.
Freedom Front-aligned parties recently won student representative council (SRC) elections at the former Sasco strongholds of Pretoria University, the University of South Africa and the Pretoria Technikon. The FF also won the University of the Free State.
Sasco lost Natal University to a Democratic Party student ally, the South African Liberal Organisation. And at a number of other institutions – including ML Sultan and Cape Technikon – Sasco either lost to other student organisations or independent students.
Surprisingly, it was black students who gave the FF its margin of victory at the Pretoria Technikon. Some said they voted for the FF because they were disillusioned with Sasco, while many other students didn’t vote.
During the pre-1994 campus elections, whites showed little interest in student politics because they were not threatened by the country’s state of affairs, said FF president Kallie Kriel. In 1994, South Africa’s first democratic elections put the black majority in control of government.
“Now white students, particularly the new generation, have stood up to fight against things like affirmative action against whites and the marginalisation of whites by the new government,” said Kriel.
Sasco provided a political training ground for some of South Africa’s leading political figures. These include chair of the youth commission, Mahlengi Bengu, and National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union deputy general secretary, David Makhoro.
But since 1994, Sasco’s largely black constituencies indicated they have had enough of student politics and now want degrees and jobs.The new fight for black students is for academic achievement and excellence.
“There is a decline in black students participation in the SRC elections,” said Gilbert Kganyago, Sasco’s newly elected president.
Critics say black students are tired of corruption among Sasco leaders. For example, at Natal University, Sasco’s loss was attributed to corruption in the previous SRC, said Sasco general secretary Jomo Khoza.
In a statement this week, Sasco declared: “It has become a trend that Sasco-led SRCs are behaving in an unbecoming manner. Practices of abuse of office, maladministration and corruption have come to characterise a number of SRC’s.”
Sasco, the Pan African Student Movement and the Azanian Student Convention are “destructive” at the universities and technikons, and that is why they fail to unite black students to vote for them, Kriel said. “Sasco is performing poorly because of its student leaders riding the gravy train.”
Kganyago echoes Kriel’s sentiments: “We have realised that some of the Sasco-led SRCs, particularly individual SRC members, have not been able to account clearly for what their activities are in those SRCs.
“This has led to a situation where SRCs are seen as institutions of self- enrichment.”
Kganyago is a former SRC president at the University of the North where Sasco still controls the SRC. While Kganyago was president, the SRC was accused of misusing millions of rands of student funds.
But Sasco contends its members are intimidated in the previously white institutions.
Kganyago said. “The FF has won SRC elections in institutions where traditionally the people who form a large part of the constituency are Afrikaners, and Africans or blacks are found to be very few in those institutions.”
Kriel disputes Sasco’s claim that only whites are voting for the FF on campus: “At the Pretoria Technikon, we won the SRC election while Afrikaners only constitute 30% of the student body.”