“Without education, your children can never really meet the challenges they will face. So it’s very important to give children education and explain that they should play a role for their country”.-Nelson Mandela

Picture by Wandile Kasabi

I felt so disconnected from the piece I just wrote about the ongoing protests re: school Fees, to be more exact varsity Fees! Not because I don’t believe in the cause *as I believe in it so much and I am all for it, if I could I would leave work now to go stand there in solidarity and march with them* I just felt that I was not giving these issues that these kids are protesting about the right articulation, the right anger and the despair! I just felt I had not done justice to the cause!

I fear not documenting this properly, the same way our stories are never are! For, I want whoever is reading this, to understand the pain, the anger, the despair that these kids are going through! I WANT YOU TO FEEL THE MOVEMENT! I want you to understand the importance, without just rubbishing it and thinking another black hooliganism! I want white people to understand what we mean by privilege! *although at times I feel that this is a lost cause, for you cannot make anyone see what they choose to be blind to* And I want them to understand that whether they acknowledge this privilege or not, WE DO!*Bona, this bullshit of taking out the few poor whites versus the masses and masses of black poverty needs to end* South Africa will not move forward unless you do! I have been so annoyed about this “freedom of movement” shit I’ve been reading in the newspapers! DO YOU REALLY WANNA KNOW WHAT A LACK OF FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT IS? DO YOU REALLY WANNA DISCUSS FREEDOMS NOW? How about we tell you about a lack of true freedom? Please spare us! Those dimwits complaining about their purported lack of freedom of movement, will benefit from what these kids are doing, how about we discuss that? Or does their privilege blind them to that too! The fact that they actually can afford these fees and their counterparts can’t, makes their “Freedom of Movement” more important right?Please white minority, keep your fake outrage! Go home and study if you are so concerned about a “time when you are supposed to be studying” and these students making it hard for you and “those students who are just on the fringes of failing and hoping for this past weeks at varsity to make a difference!” Question is, why haven’t ya’ll been studying anyway? Akere for lona varsity is a vacation that you go to, till you join you daddy’s company or your daddy’s buddy’s company!I once read that the some of the kids born in 1994, will not regard Mandela as a hero and that was a sad hard pill to swallow, to accept, but looking at where they come from and what they face on a daily can we blame them? Can we blame them when they see the inequalities that they face in South Africa on a daily? Can we blame them when they come from neighbourhoods without any running water and electricity? Can we blame them when they see their brothers and sisters with degrees not being employed? Can we blame when they’re sitting in class hungry and get faced by privilege? Then you get the so-called Minister of Higher Education who is a faux communist *the irony!* coming in and telling them to accept the 6% offer, atleast its not 10.5% increase right? Right! “I urge students to accept this offer …. In all conflict situations, there is always necessity to compromise so that no one party gets 100% of what it wants … otherwise we will not resolve the challenges,” Blade Nzimande (Minister of Higher Education South Africa) I think Blade is being ignorant, caused by his political privilege! He is ignoring the facts that these kids are compromising on a daily! GOING TO SCHOOL IN A POSH PLACE COMING FROM MKHUKHU/SQUATTER CAMP IS COMPRISMISING! KNOWING THAT YOU MIGHT BE THE ONLY ONE FROM YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY TO EVER GET A DEGREE IS A COMPROMISE! So, he mustn’t come here and treat these kids like they’re impetuous *they’re just gatvol like the rest of us!*If a richer country than South Africa, like Germany, can scrap their tuition fees, why can’t we just halt the increase? And this is the interesting thing here, these kids are not even saying varsity must be free, they’re just saying we reject the proposed increases! The constitution states that “everyone has a right to education!” EVERYONE not just the few privileged ones but everyone. As Pierre de Vos noted on his article (Excluding students from University because of lack of funds may be unconstitutional) “section 29(1) (b) of the Constitution states that everyone has the right “to further education, which the state, through reasonable measures, must make progressively available and accessible”. Unlike the other social and economic rights contained in section 26 and 27 of the Bill of Rights, this right is not qualified by requiring the state to make further education available and accessible only “within its available resources. This means the state will not automatically be able to justify its failure to make further education available and accessible to more students, on the basis that no resources are available to do so. The drafters of the Constitution thus decided to treat education differently from the right to housing, health care and sufficient food and water, which the state has a duty to make accessible progressively but only within its available resources”. So, all of you with your half-baked idiotic opinions, please take a seat at the back and allow these kids to exercise their constitutional rights! Someone has to *and if u ask about your constitutional right of freedom of movement, know that some rights are more important than others” And recognise that, this is also a “freedom of movement” battle! The right to access of education, for without the money, we are not free to move in those spaces! We are not welcome! Again, I ask what makes your rights more important? What makes your rights special?

I love this movement! This movement should be supported! This movement has politicians scared, for, for the first time they see the potential of what could happen if they continue pressing on people who have no more to give! “He also cautioned students to be wary of “pseudo revolutionaries” who hoped to see an “Arab Spring” coming out of their protest over genuine issues”-Gwede Mantashe *As if Mantashe would know what a revolution is, if it hit him on the face! mxm, he after all is a fake communist*. #FEESMUSTFALL

Article By Nthabiseng Lucia Tselapedi

Comments

comments