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South Africa has betrayed the dreams of the youth of 1976

15 June 2021 | Story Nombulelo Shange | Photo Supplied

A head and sholder photograph of Nombulelo Shange in front of the UFS Main Building. — Nombulelo Shange, lecturer in the Department of Sociology, says South Africa has betrayed the dreams of the youth of 1976.

Opinion article by Nombulelo Shange, lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of the Free State.

Recent Stats SA statistics that put youth unemployment at 63.30% have recently re-ignited fees must fall protests because parents are feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many have lost their jobs and are struggling even harder to support their children’s education and the growing costs of service delivery. These are all examples of our society’s failure to realise the hopes and dreams of the youth of 1976 who sacrificed their lives so today’s youth would not have to. The news of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange market recovering is also another example of how we have betrayed the youth who are still suffering from the socio-economic blow caused by the COVID-19 lockdown, it shows a society more concerned with capital gain over the wellbeing of the youth. When young people protest or challenge society’s contradictions they are accused of being unreasonable and spoilt and told they do not understand the economic complexities of service delivery and resource redistribution. They retreat and watch as the markets thrive in the midst of a pandemic that has exacerbated their struggles. They get painted as rude, entitled, and ungrateful when the truth is they have been more patient than anyone else

The youth of today is just as capable

While society undermines the youth, we forget they were victorious against the oppressive apartheid regime. They created the conditions for the freedoms we enjoy. Today’s youth is just as capable, if not more so. They show their resilience and resourcefulness by surviving in an uncaring society that is riddled with inequality and poverty. Just like the brave young people who challenged apartheid, today’s youth has it within them to address the hangover from apartheid suffered by South Africa and made worse by COVID-19. Political uprisings like the Arab Spring, which later influenced the rise of Occupy Wall Street, were sparked by smaller injustices than what the South African youth are faced with today. But our youth are still waiting patiently in the hope that our leaders will one day eventually show up for them.

The Arab Spring protests started in Tunisia in 2011, after Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire as a reaction to growing unemployment, corruption and poverty in Tunisia. The protests quickly spread all over the Arab world and eventually sparked global discussion and protests. At the time the Arab Spring took shape, unemployment sat at between 13.05% and 18.33% in Tunisia. South Africa’s unemployment by comparison is soaring at 32.6% and creating the most unequal country in the world, with the widest gap between the rich and the poor.

The unwillingness to address these issues disempowers the youth and society as a whole, by extension. The material conditions of the youth have been threatened. We place a lot of importance on who we are based on what we have materially. So when we don’t have we start to question ourselves, to the point of questioning our existence and sense of belonging. We see this lack of material possession as a representation of our incompleteness. And I believe that is what the pandemic has done to the youth.

Incompleteness in relation to blackness

In many ways it has made us feel incomplete and has added further tensions and stress to issues the youth have always been concerned with – these are problems such as access to education, healthcare, employment opportunities and the existence of systems and structures that can build their general well-being.

Bantu Biko has had a discussion around completeness which helped us to further understand the Marxist material discourse in relation to our colonial and apartheid history. Biko talks about incompleteness or the feeling of incompleteness in relation to blackness. He says when black people, especially black youth, explore their surroundings they see a lack, they see incompleteness. They look around, see their streets and find them inadequate. They look at their schools and find they are incomplete. They look around and see their homes which are often inadequate, and look at their playgrounds which are in poor condition.

As they gradually move out of their neighbourhoods, they see a shift when they enter white neighbourhoods. Suddenly the schools are beautiful, ivory towers of knowledge. People’s homes are beautiful and welcoming. Playgrounds are well-looked-after with resources that you don’t find in black communities. Even the way that structures and systems function is efficient.

What then happens is that the black individual, black community and the black youth, by extension, conclude that blackness is incomplete. If our schools, homes, streets, playgrounds, hospitals and the structures in our communities are not functioning as they should. Then something is wrong with them. And by extension because the structures belong to us, then there is something wrong or incomplete with blackness.

Well-run, well-functioning, complete and adequate white neighbourhoods and systems lead one to conclude that whiteness is associated with goodness and completeness. When we start to question our completeness we are questioning our humanity, sense of belonging and our very existence. This is dangerous. I think this is one of the biggest challenges for the youth and is reinforced by our colonial and apartheid history and a failed revolution that has done little to address socio-economic issues.

The youth have always led the struggle

Any revolutionary action throughout history and across the world has always had the youth at the heart of the struggle, leading that struggle. This also includes our own apartheid struggle, not just the Soweto uprising of 1976. When the apartheid system had dealt with the elders and leaders of the revolution by imprisoning them, killing them and banishing them into exile, the youth were left behind to ensure the victory of the revolution. Even the Arab Spring protests were led by the youth. The current discourse on the climate crisis is being championed by the youth while sluggish ageing leaders debate whether a crisis even exists. If we are to be victorious over the struggles caused by COVID-19, youth empowerment and engagement should be at the centre of these interventions. Youth leadership in all industries and structures is crucial. Support of youth innovations and entrepreneurship will not only end poverty, but has the potential to launch South Africa into the continent and beyond.

News Archive

Open letter from Prof Jonathan Jansen to all UFS students

2014-02-22

Dear Students of the University of the Free State

In the past four years there has emerged a new consensus on the three campuses of the University of the Free State (UFS) about the things that divide us – such as racism, sexism and homophobia. Students and campus leaders have worked hard to develop this new consensus in residences and in the open spaces on campus. There can be no doubt that new bonds of friendship have developed across the markers of race, ethnicity, class, religion and sexual orientation. I bear witness to these new solidarities every day on the campus.

You chose a white student to head up the transformation portfolio on the SRC. You chose a black captain to head up the university’s first team in rugby. You chose a white “prime” as head of residence to lead a predominantly black men’s residence. You chose a South African woman of Indian descent as Rag Queen and last week, a black student from Cape Town as the men’s Rag winner—choices not possible and never made before in our campus history. Many of you have intimate friends who come from different social or cultural or religious backgrounds. You learn together, share rooms together, pray together and party together. In other words, in the day to day workings of this university campus, you have demonstrated to campus, city and country that we can overcome the lingering effects of racism and other maladies in this new generation. You have helped create a university community inclusive of people of diverse religions, abilities, class and sexual orientation.

I have said this repeatedly that from time to time this new consensus will be tested – when a minority of students, and they are a small and dwindling minority, still act as if these are the days of apartheid. And when that consensus is tested as it was this week, and as it will be tested in the future, only then we will be able to assess the strength and durability of our progress in creating a new South African campus culture of human togetherness based on respect, dignity and embrace.

The real test of our leadership, including student leadership, is how we respond when our transformation drive is threatened.

Let me say this: I have absolute faith in you, as students of this great university, to stand together in your condemnation of these vile acts of violence and to move together in your determination to maintain the momentum for the Human Project of the University of the Free State. We have come too far to allow a few criminals to derail what you have built together in recent years.

There will, no doubt, be unscrupulous people on all sides of the political spectrum wanting to milk this tragedy for their own narrow purposes. There will be false information, rumours and exaggerations by those who wish to inflame a bad situation to gain mileage for their agendas. That is inevitable in a country that is still so divided.

I ask you, through all of this, to keep perspective. Two or ten or even twenty students behaving badly do not represent 30,000 students; a minority of violent and hateful persons do not represent the ideals, ambitions and commitments of the majority. At the same time, let us be realistic – anyone who thinks you can drive transformation without resistance clearly does not understand the difficult process of change.

The events of the week remind us, however, that we still have a long road to walk in deepening social and academic transformation at our university. Yes, we have invested hundreds of hours in training and mentorship; we have created new structures – such as the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice – to capture the energy and imagination of students driving transformation; we have created many opportunities for students to study and travel on this and other continents to enable cross-cultural learning; we have established formal and informal opportunities to dialogue about difficult issues on and off campus between students and their leaders; and we crafted new curricula to enable teaching and learning on the big questions of our times.

But this is clearly not enough, and so I have decided on the following immediate next steps:

We will meet for several hours next week to think about how we can deepen the transformation of our university after this terrible incident.
We will arrange a University Assembly on the events of the past week so that we speak with one voice on human wrongs and to re-commit to human rights and we will continue with open forum discussions during the months to come.
We will review the entire spectrum of programmes, from orientation to residence life to the undergraduate curriculum, to determine how effective our interventions really are in reaching all students with respect to basic issues of human rights.
We will review our media and communications strategy to determine how far and deep our messages on human rights travel across all sectors of the university community. In this regard it is important that the campus be blanketed on a regular basis with our condemnation of human wrongs and our commitment to human rights.
We will commission the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice to review the events of the past week and make recommendations on how we can improve the campus environment so that all students are protected from harm inside residences, classrooms and in open spaces of the campus.
We will take the questions raised during this week into the academic community and to the general staff of the university so that all personnel also engage with our own roles and responsibilities with respect to campus transformations.
We undertake to make annual report-backs on transformation to all stakeholders in public forums so that students and staff and external communities can track the progress of the university on matters of human rights on campus.

I wish to thank my staff for acting firmly as soon as this tragic event came to our attention. We worked through the night to find and identify the perpetrators. We traced the two students and immediately handed them to the police. They were expelled. And throughout this process we offered counselling and support to the victim of this violent act.

The two former students were expelled and will now face justice in the criminal courts. It is hoped that in the course of time they will come to their senses and seek restoration and reconciliation with the student they so callously harmed. They are not part of the university community anymore.

That is the kind of university we are.

Jonathan D Jansen
Vice-Chancellor and Rector
University of the Free State
20 February 2014

Note: The use of the word ‘campus’ refers to all three campuses of the UFS, namely the Bloemfontein Campus, South Campus and Qwaqwa Campus.

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