When the National Party was defeated in the first democratic election in South Africa in 1994, many thought it meant also the death of their oppressive ideals and programme. How wrong we were.
Instead, we’ve come to realise how strong their policies were embedded in the social and economic structure of the South African political landscape.
As for the aspirations of the millions for whom poverty was their middle name, these became a permanent subject of policy formulation and improved policy.
I am writing this piece during what has been coined the “Human Rights Month” in South Africa. I am writing at a time when students in higher learning centers have been engaged in protests against the exclusion of students on the basis of their financial status.
This took me back to my years at university where with each year, I had to apply for financial assistance with TEFSA. Coming from a family where we all depended on my father’s meagre weekly wage, he could not have afforded the required costs. As a result, upon completion it took me six years to complete the student debt before I could buy myself a vehicle to look the part.
The protests as they are happening today, are the same as those I was involved in during the mid-90s where we had to discuss why students should not be excluded on the basis of being unable to pay. The month of April 2021 will see us celebrating 27 years of freedom. The celebrations will be taking place at a time. when the question of access to higher education has not been resolved with politicians eager to make us believe ‘all is well’. Certainly the consciousness of freedom has long deserted them as Wiliam Hazlitt once wrote that; “The love of liberty is the love of others while the love of power is the love of ourselves”. This quote does find expression in the current goings if one were to examine the question of access to higher learning. Looking at who are the participants in these protests, one gets more convinced that the past still enjoys a virtually undisturbed dominance in the space of higher education which over the decades, had sought to further strengthen white supremacy. The difference though, is that this time it is the democratically elected who bears the justification of the inherited policy of financial exclusion. A difficult call it is to lead a people who still desire and yearn for change. The question therefore becomes; is it the love of liberty or love of power that drives the new elite? The love of liberty comes with responsibility which has to be nurtured all the time to realise results. While the love of power comes with deceit and greed. On the former, it seems as if we have failed in our duty of caring for students and thus ensuring their access to higher education. On examination of the latter, we’ve clearly aced it with all the commitments made throughout the year while in truth and in fact, the plight of students at higher learning institutions has been abandoned in favour of the status quo. As once said by John Spencer Bassett, “Politics indeed make strange bedfellows”. As pointed out supra, the National Party’s ideals and programmes did not die with the collapse of the name. The thesis of white supremacy can still be seen in the construct of democracy as viewed in the eyes of the Democratic Alliance and the Freedom Front Plus. These parties in their rhetoric, have embraced freedom and by extension, equality. However the arena in which they play, is for the preservation of rights and interests as well as accumulation by a minority group. Since education is a human rights subject, the exclusion of African and Coloured students becomes victory to be celebrated by a minority with guided and learned justifications by the African political leadership. Indeed “politics make strange bedfellows”. The characterisation of the access to education struggles lies at the belly of the struggles fought and were never won. In furtherance of our desire to realise and enjoy complete human rights, the democratic state should cease being apologists of a system which was forced down our throats.
Phillip Darkie Mbanyana
The writer is the Director of Darkie Mbanyana Solutions, a community activist, and a former law practitioner
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