Roshila Pillay There’s a sizeable black pac-man figure bearing down with razor-sharp teeth on a teeny-weeny helpless white pacman. The white pacman is seriously disadvantaged with no teeth in sight to take on the formidable enemy.
“It’s a black-versus-white campaign. If you read between the lines it can be seen as a bit racist, but 100% of the people who vote for us are Afrikaner so we have to campaign for them,” explains Bennie Coetzee, a BSc computer science final-year student who also chairs the University of Pretoria’s Freedom Front party. Coetzee is trying to dispel any false notions people might have about his party’s current campaign – including the pacman poster described above – for the Student Representative Council (SRC) elections. The party has held most of the seats in the SRC for three consecutive years and Coetzee is confident it will have another victory in the upcoming elections, which will run for four days from August 28. While the FF remains king of the roost at this campus, most tertiary institutions, including the University of Stellenbosch, Uni- versity of the Orange Free State, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education and Rand Afrikaans University have switched over to a non-party basis where students who aren’t aligned to any particular political party stand for SRC elections. Many of Tukkies’s students think the FF is long past its sell-by date. They are also largely in favour of non-political parties to comprise the SRC. Several students at the university’s medical campus believe the party has overstepped the boundary between fighting for students’ rights and staging a political battle that holds no relevance for them. “I think it’s quite aggressive,” says Jason Mannix (23), referring to the party’s campaigns. Would he vote for the FF? “Not a chance. I’d like to see student issues addressed rather than political issues.” “Everyone has a right to freedom of speech but not when its blatantly racist and bound to hurt somebody,” says Jevani Pillay (21). She feels the party’s hurtful tactics undermine the other students’ right to being just students. “When I first saw the poster I was completely offended. It is quite irresponsible in that it could negatively influence the first years fresh out of school. They’re very impressionable and might think it’s all true,” says Pillay’s friend, Lesego Sehuma (22).
Winston Schoeman, a third-year psychology student and leader of the non-political Science Students’ Union, says the FF’s campaign “is making the university and students out to be racist”. >From management’s side the students should be at liberty to do as they please, as accorded them by the Constitution. “We have no problem with it because we are giving students the freedom to organise their parties and elections,” says Flip van der Watt, the dean of student affairs. “The university has even given them, and all other parties, R3 000 each to organise their campaigns,” he says. “If top management have not complained about the campaign then it must be okay,” is Coetzee’s final say on the matter.