NOT IN MY NAME

I urge all South Africans, of all races and all backgrounds to take a public position and say all the  thuggery  and violence being unleashed all over our tertiary institutions is NOT IN MY NAME.  Please use your WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or whatever to spread the message so that the agent provocateurs or criminals who are behind this whole mayhem engulfing our tertiary institutions can be isolated and unmasked to be exposed for who they are.

Most of us fully support the basic concept of the #FEESMUSTFALL movement; and we also fully subscribe to the noble ideal that there must be some sort of free tertiary education, at least for the first qualification (be it the first university degree or the first tertiary institution’s diploma).

We may differ on the modus operandi, matters of detail, on how and when this may be achieved; and this is the conversation that this country must honestly have now. And the Honourable Minister of Education, Dr Blade Nzimande, must learn to listen carefully to all voices of reason.       

However, the main reason for this particular article is to add to those few voices of reason who have now come up in public to condemn these acts of criminality that we see popping up all over our tertiary institutions across the country.

I also strongly urge all the students and academics at all the affected universities to stand up and be counted that all the thuggery and violence being unleashed at their institutions is NOT IN MY NAME.

As an academic, practicing advocate of the High Court, economic analyst, a parent, and a current member of one University Council, I am in daily touch with many university students and many academics from different institutions; and I unfortunately find that most important stakeholders are afraid of shouting out in public that this whole mayhem being unleashed at our institutions of higher learning is NOT IN MY NAME.

People are afraid to take a stand and condemn this whole criminality because they feel they may be perceived as being reactionary and anti-#FEESMUSTFALL. People find it easier to march against the government and hold placards high in condemning the government for whatever, and the mass media is guaranteed to be there to show this. Unfortunately, the very same people are not principled enough to isolate and unmask the criminal opportunists and agent provocateurs who highjack these noble causes for their own narrow selfish reasons.

Many universities have already been forced to occasionally temporarily close down and suspend their academic activities because of all the vandalism that has unnecessarily taken an unfair advantage of this noble #FEESMUSTFALL campaign. Many of these institutions have already warned the students that they may be forced to close down for prolonged periods if the situation does not stabilise.

This would seriously affect the futures of many people and also negatively affect the skills base of our country. Academic leadership must do their best to avoid this worst case scenario of prolonged university closures and / or delayed university examinations.

Maybe, as one of the Class of 1976 when we had to sacrifice our education for the noble political liberation of this country, it is important to clearly distinguish between the unnecessary mayhem we see now and what happened in 1976. In 1976, the students were dealing with a very intransigent apartheid regime that they had no say in.

The institutions where they studied had some inappropriate prefabricated or dilapidated structures that were not conducive for academic study. While I will never ever justify any burning of any library in my life; some students did explain in 1976 why they burned some libraries those days on grounds that those libraries were only full of useless books which were not of good academic standard. I disagreed with this argument in 1976, despite accepting the collective accountability that resulted in most of us ending up in political detention. That was a different hostile environment where we were a disenfranchised majority.

The situation is different now.  The shock local government election results we have witnessed in different parts of South Africa recently bear testimony to the fact that those who want to change the direction of the government, for whatever reason, can practically do so within the parameters of the law. There is thus absolutely no justification for vandalism, criminality, and the thuggery we witness being unleashed at out tertiary institutions. No one can in any way equate these acts of vandalism we witness today with the students’ political agenda in 1976, of which I was proudly part of.   

Let us all stand up and be counted in saying we totally condemn in the strongest terms all the violence, thuggery, and criminality that is currently being unleashed at our universities; and that all those bad things being done are NOT IN MY NAME.