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The contradictions of education
Sandile Memela, The New Age, Johannesburg, 30 October 2015
A critical examination of student upheavals soon reveals a lack of focus,
strategy and political confusion with neither clear nor well-defined
objectives.
The history of the student upheavals teach us clearly that perhaps a
struggle waged by students does not lead to total liberation, whatever that
is.
Too many say 1976 marked a turning point where the student and youth of this
country were in the forefront of the struggle to end oppression and
exploitation in South Africa.
Sandile Memela Article Illustration.jpg
This was repeated in 1985 when, again, students and youth pushed hard
against poor education, injustice and inequality.
But a critical examination of the gains, if any, soon reveals loss of focus,
lack of strategy and political confusion with neither clear and well-defined
objectives of the desires and aspirations.
There seems to be something fleeting and shallow about student and youth
power that lacks a coherent and consistent political strategy. Instead, the
end results are not what students fought for, that is, trained and effective
teachers, state-of-the-art learning facilities and unconditional access to
good education, let alone economic equality and social justice.
Perhaps it needs to be said that the vanguard of the struggle is not the
students but their parents who are the workers. Student power, with all its
energy and enthusiasm, is riddled with inherent faults that will ultimately
see young people ultimately assimilated into the economy .
Those of us who were participants in the deep rumbles of 1976 have, at the
end, become part of the very system we fought against.
Exactly four years after June 16, 1976 - a semblance of normality returned
to schools and thus small groups started to graduate from high school.
By 1980 the fortunate few joined other students with ambitions to use
education as a tool to escape poverty.
Coming mostly from poor working class backgrounds, our parents were the
domestic helpers, gardeners, messengers, cleaners and other menial workers.
They never owned cars to drive us to university campuses or witness as we
settled comfortably into residences at bush colleges like Fort Hare,
Turfloop and Ongoye. The few parents who could afford it only accompanied us
to the train station to bid us farewell in our ambitions to escape our
condemned backgrounds of poverty and hopelessness.
Looking back, it would seem that our oppressed and exploited parents knew
that only education would free us from the hell on earth of hopeless
township life. Very few of my colleagues and friends came from privileged
backgrounds. There would be the odd one or two whose parents were
schoolteachers, principals or nurses but the rest of our parents were
underpaid workers.
Many of them worked up to 18 hours a day which saw them leave home at 4am
only to return around 9pm due to transport problems, long working hours and
the distances they had to travel. Ironically, these black mothers and
fathers were our heroes who did what they had to do to keep us well fed with
leftovers and well clothed with shabby garb from second-hand shops.
It was only when we graduated from high schools that we realised we were
poor, condemned and had little hope in life - except when we went to school.
A few years earlier, which was in 1976, a growing number had been
radicalised by this experience and became freedom fighters who went into
exile, jail and died in the face of apartheid repression.
But I suppose those of us who got bursaries and sponsorship to go to
universities represented both a betrayal and a fulfilment of African
people's dreams for freedom. The primary aim of education is to train and
prepare you for a working life that will promote and perpetuate the economic
system with its injustice and inequality. We were willing to lift ourselves
up by our bootstraps and whether we knew it or not then, this was going to
alienate us from what we came to know as "our people" and disconnect us from
our communities.
Usually, progress for educated blacks is a giant leap that takes them away
from their traditions, languages, communities, families and other ties that
bind, to adopt new ways that co-opts them.
The university graduates become the movers and shakers quick to integrate
corporate culture in the name of individual self-determination. This is
always rationalised as the result of hard work, self-discipline, focus and,
ultimately, success and achievement.
It should be said that in 1976, for instance, we already understood that
getting a university education would give us access to becoming part of the
black middle class.
We understood the middle class was created to be a buffer zone between the
black poor and the exploitative white-controlled economic system.
In the pursuit of our student ambitions and dreams, many of us have found
ourselves in a strange situation where we have become part of what is
derogatorily called the oppressor class.
In short, we have become part of the history and system that we not only
fought against but condemned some of our mates to poverty and hopelessness.
We were products of oppression and exploitation, of course, but as we
progressed and matured through finishing our university education, we
escaped into the freedom guaranteed by education and self-determination.
We did not have any extra qualities or abilities that our peers and
contemporaries lacked except that we understood and were willing to listen
to our parents and teachers. Even today as the Fees Must Fall campaign
falters, it is the voice of the parents that tells students to return to
class.
Yes, education will not only liberate students from material need but
provide jobs, meaning, purpose, relative comfort and security.
To speak truthfully about the link between this history and liberation, some
of us are fortunate to occupy middle-management positions in the government,
the corporate world and in NGOs.
There will always be a sense of betrayal threatening to overwhelm students
who will have made it because of the untransformed economic system and
corporate culture. Essentially, student struggles won't always result in
transformation the youth wish to see.
. Sandile Memela is a journalist, writer, culture critic and civil
servant
From: <http://tnaepaper.co.za/> http://tnaepaper.co.za/
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