It is sad day when political vulgarism spills over to public schools as it has been happening recently with Ludwe Ngamlana Primary school in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. I had with a sinking heart it being reported on the news that a group of concerned parents were responsible for closing school gates for three days. In actual fact the people who locked with chains and barricaded the gates of that school were not parents, neither did they stay in the area, or had children in the school. This was a group vulgar minded and power hungry people who when they could not convince parents hired a minuscule crowd to be their devil's advocate.
The issue behind their illegal closure of the school was because of the fact that the acting principal is not a member of SADTU, a COSATU affiliate but that of NAPTOSA. So they organised like minded members of the Tripartite Alliance (TA), to accompany them to go up in arms, trying to get rid of the acting principal for one of their own.
They first tried their dirty tricks by trying to disband the School Governing Body. The Congress of the People in the Western Cape got wind of this, sought and received speedy intervention from the Education Department towards the end of last year. In my capacity as a member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, and a resident of the area, I had contacted the MEC for Education, Donald Grant, who was very helpful in speedy resolving the issues (see here).
The conspirators then vowed to make schooling impossible when the pupils reopened, which led to their locking of the school gates this week. Upon hearing that they had locked the school gates I notified the MEC. The MEC eventually had to apply for a court interdict against the perpetrators.
The profile of these intimidating bullies is interesting. Kuthula Mamba known as Sondela, acts as their spoke person but does not even stay in the area. The same is true with others, like Vuyani Maphuma, with the exception of Tshabalala. Yet they saw fit to interrupt classes in the school for three days. The intention behind this thuggery is to intimidate the acting principal and the school governing body to cave in to their demands. The sad thing is that this is not an isolated case, it happens all the time in township areas. As the results fear amongst the people is rife, because what they usually do is to organise thugs of similar mind to toyi-toyi in front of the targeted official place. And most of the time they get away with it.
Luckily the parents and the School Governing Body of Ludwe refused to cave in, at great risk to their lives. After being privy to these dirty tricks they stuck to their guns, staying behind the current acting principal.
Sadder still is the conduct of the police in that community who when asked to enforce the law by opening the gate locks chose to side with the thugs by refusing. Their flimsy reasoning was that as members of that community they did feel comfortable acting against their own which might make them targets of scorn. According to MEC Grant, the police commissioner, Mzwandile Petros, was himself uncooperative which is what compelled the MEC to open a court interdict.
From this incident it is obvious that our police still do not understand what it means to be a civil servant, and to serve the public without bias of political agendas. This is why as the Congress of the People we're resolving on taking the issue further by laying charges of neglect against the police who were on duty that day. If need be we'll extend the charges to the police commissioner. We'll also be advising the parents of Ludwe Primary to open a case against those who violated their children's constitutional right to education.
The practise of politicising civil institutions is one of the things that are fundamentally wrong with our country. We've these so called leaders who do not seem to understand the value of schooling, who think civil service is just another weapon for power mongering and hegemony. Education is very crucial for survival and self-sufficiency of any community. It is a process by which the values and intellectual legacy of society are transmitted to its young. You teach children that it permissible to disrupt and disorganise schooling, and next you expect them to respect schooling and education? ‘It is through education that society both preserves and renews itself.'[Hannah Arendt]. Until we can get this through our head we'll never be able to turn the regressive situation in our country.
You may ask yourself what do people who call themselves political and community leaders stand to achieve by disrupting children's schooling. Deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe recently reprimanded the president of the ANC Youth League for visiting schools during school hours and disrupting schooling. And here in the Western Cape you have a Treasure of the ANC Youth League, Andile Lile, being part of bogus forces of intimidation that closes schools so children may not learn. What are we expected to read from that?
What drives the TA members to embark on these kind of actions is of course the determination to create the nomenklatura (cadre deployment where public servants are appointed by the ‘Party') culture in this country. Nothing that is not of the same stable and thinking is allowed to exist, and is, by all means, purged away wherever it sprouts.
In the nomenklatura culture, accountability is replaced by party loyalty; political debate by populist gerrymandering, failure is subsidised as progress, intimidation is called transformation, tyranny justified as protecting the ‘revolution'; wide spread poverty that comes from making silly decisions is tolerated as faithfulness to the cause, etc. Before you know quangocracy, dysfunctional democracy is upon you. That's what happens when you confuse nation's needs with party interests and personal material gain.
The nomenklatura custom refuses to allow anyone anywhere who does not share its thinking, and is usually promoted as ‘the revolution'. When the pressure of real social sentiment is not with the ‘the revolution' thugs are hired to promote it by violence and intimidation. The language becomes replete with military terminology and offensive fronts.
I urge the communities to stand and reclaim their communities; let's not it happen what happened in the early eighties when we were terrorised by thugs in the name of ‘the struggle'. Then people, from religious communities and civil ones eventually stood to up to say enough is enough, which what materialised as the United Democratic Movement (UDF). It looks what was necessary then has become so again.
If we say we are liberated we must rejected everything that comes with our oppression even when disguised as culture, custom, or political loyalty. For far too long our education system has been fragmented and politicised. For far too long we've been dominated, forced and compelled to be things we don't really like in the name of one thing or the other. For far too long we've allowed fiddling politicians to use our public institutions for one idea over another, largely for political expediency. Enough is enough.
Mbulelo Ncedana, MPL, is Cope Chairperson in the Western Cape
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