South Africa

South Africa

Student protests: Cycle of indignity continues, without answer

Student protests: Cycle of indignity continues, without answer

The shutdown at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) has been shocking. The response suggests violence will continue. #FeesMustFall opened issues of fee increases, transformation, and accessibility. As questions and protests will continue to arise across the country’s campuses, GREG NICOLSON asks how brutality can be avoided.

Artwork by Faith47

Ndabenhle Ntshangase is a third-year economics student at UKZN’s Westville campus. This week, Ntshangase was in the residences, preparing for a test, earphones in, when the door was kicked open. Security shot three rounds of rubber bullets at Ntshangase, who fell off the residence bed. “They dragged me out of the room and demanded me to switch on the lights of the residence corridor. They did so by punching and kicking.

“I was joined by a residence mate who was taken out of the shower, he was shot at and brutally handled out of the bathroom, he has seven bullet sores on his body. The SAPS were observing this without objection. We were dragged and pushed from the second floor, to the midnight cold, which was at the entrance. My residence mate only had his underwear on.”

There were student protests long before #FeesMustFall. In the media, many of the protests have been defined by student violence, the burning of campus infrastructure, and confrontations with police. Many students’ experiences, however, relate to brutality from police and private security companies.

UKZN students have raised issues related to NSFAS, free tertiary education, fee increases, and decolonisation. These issues are too complex to solve in the short term. #FeesMustFall didn’t start campus revolts, but has intensified them. As Daily Maverick looked into how these issues could be resolved between students, universities and the state, there were few signs of hope, and a strong suggestion that violence, now normalised, perhaps always normalised, will only continue.

“They’ve undressed us of our dignity and humanity. Students are going through the worst experience and all we hear about is the destruction of property. Yes, destruction of property is not commendable and should not be condoned, but we have to remember we are humans. Property does not have feelings, property does not go through trauma – humans do. The university should restructure its priorities. If it did in the first place, we would not be here,” said Ntshangase.

UKZN has reported some of the most disturbing incidents of violence throughout student protests across the country. Several cars, a cafe and a library have been set alight. A student was allegedly raped by a police officer on the Pietermaritzburg campus. There have been multiple reports of security and police brutality, with one student allegedly shot with a live round of ammunition, although reports remain inconclusive.

The violence at UKZN appears extreme, but there is a strong resonance to how situations have flared up at other universities. Former student leaders who went through the last year’s protests say that unless systems change, violence will continue.

Former University of Witwatersrand SRC leader Shaeera Kalla noted that students were going hungry, without accommodation, and therefore struggling to cope with their studies.

“These issues are not random and outrageous on their own, they are all linked and fall under the structural violence of the system – this system that has colonised our thinking to such an extent that a burnt building will get more attention than the rape of a student,” said Kalla.

“If we are to move beyond violent engagement we will have to change the structure of the way things work and, most important, who they work for. The system works against the poor black student. Until that is the reality we would be naive to not expect violence, because the reality we live in is already violent,” Kalla added.

She noted the failure of university management to engage on student issues and the violent response from security and police, called in to manage protests

“None of us want to see a library destroyed but what does that library represent in an unjust system? It does not represent learning and accessibility to education, and until it does represent that, it means little to the poor black child because it is inaccessible for so many. So if we want libraries to be respected we must respect and honour the hunger of students to attain a decommodified and decolonised education.

“Until then, our condemnation and hooliganisation of protesting students without any real understanding of their reality is nothing more than hypocrisy. What [we’re] caught up with is to normalise the abnormal. We must fearlessly imagine a reality beyond the unjust present – that is what every generation that has created some kind of change has done. It may not always be the ultimate change but it will be closer to it nonetheless.”

Former Tshwane University of Technology SRC President Sthembiso ka Shandu said violence is perpetuated by university management. They call in private security who are untrained in public order policing, he said, but shoot rubber bullets at students. “They force them in fact into responding with violence.” Such responses do not work, he said. “Universities push our students into corners so they can resort to violence.”

Shandu said there’s also a problem with how some universities negotiate with student leaders. SRC leaders, he said, can be reluctant to lead protests while their supporters and other student structures are on the front lines. Some student leaders want to protect their future careers while others might accept agreements without consulting students who want to protest. The challenge arises, said Shandu, when universities only want to consult with the elected SRC, who, because of their own concerns, don’t necessarily represent those on the front lines, and refuse to include other student structures in discussions.

University of Johannesburg (UJ) Associate Professor Pier Paolo Frassinelli, who has helped document the role of private security on the campus during protests, said securitisation has come at a big financial cost while impeding dialogue.

“The violent modes of repression and securitisation that prevailed at some of our campuses represented, above all, an intellectual and political failure,” he said. “One can only hope that as students are likely to continue raising issues and protesting, the space will be created for more meaningful and creative forms of engagement.”

His UJ colleague, Professor Jane Duncan, has written about some of the complexities of protests at universities, particularly on how violent acts such as burning buildings, where perpetrators remain unknown, lead to increased security measures.

“Private security guards have been deployed on many campuses, even when they were peaceful and no protests were taking place, suggesting that a national decision had been taken to deploy them, irrespective of the actual threat levels on the ground,” said Duncan.

“Depending on the authorities’ responses, some protesters may be pushed towards radicalisation, where more extreme, even violent actions are engaged in, or institutionalisation, where activists become sucked into official decision-making structures,” she continued. “Many protesters are frightened off by the escalating violence, but small groups of protesters – whose attitudes have been hardened by official recalcitrance – begin to specialise in more organised acts of violence.”

That seems to leave many universities in something of a stalemate. They responded to perceived threats by introducing private security, who across many campuses have been accused of further ostracising students, and sexual harassment. While some protests appear to have been avoided because of the increased security, as Duncan suggests, they seem to have developed militant groupings ever set on raising the stakes, although it remains unclear whether stringent security controls are the cause of the spate of burnings by students, or whether students are even responsible.

Unfortunately, despite attempts, Daily Maverick was unable to connect with management from various universities on how violence in the future might be avoided. The SAPS spokesman did not pick up his phone. The department of higher education and learning spokeswoman said she was inundated with media requests and couldn’t respond in time. Even the Nelson Mandela Foundation, which has been a part of mediation processes at varsities, did not offer recommendations on how to avoid violence at varsities.

In a Sunday Times piece earlier this year, Wits Vice-Chancellor Adam Habib and Rhodes Vice-Chancellor Sizwe Mabizela suggested that students resorting to violence must be held accountable and a long-term solution to tertiary affordability and accessibility must be reached. Habib has also strenuously defended the use of private security on campus in a lengthy statement, defending the rights of the majority of students and staff against the risk protesters pose.

“Many have simply turned a blind eye to violence or threats thereof, and some have even advocated violence as a legitimate means in a revolutionary moment. Really? At a university? In this moment, in a democratic era, whatever our criticisms of it? Is there not a romanticising of violence by middle-class activists and academics?” Habib asked.

He pointed towards broader issues of access and funding. President Jacob Zuma has instituted a commission of inquiry into the issues, which started too late to have any impact for students worried about this year’s fee increases or determined to see another zero-percent increase. Even his no-fee increase appears to have backfired, creating an expectation that government will struggle to meet. Unfortunately the inquiry symbolises government’s slow response to dealing with student issues.

Like universities, the state is trying to mitigate the fallout from #FeesMustFall, which is really just a broad view of students tired of feeling as though they are struggling too hard to get what they deserve while battling against systems they might have hoped their parents had defeated.

Students will continue to protest at campuses across South Africa, but violence and brutality cannot be the answer. Students have also shown themselves to be reasonable, and universities must enter into long and difficult negotiations, as some have done. Intensified security measures might dissuade most, but will only radicalise those they’re really aimed at pacifying.

This week, UKZN student Ntshangase was shot with rubber bullets and dragged by security, despite not having been involved in protests. His dignity was violated. There are many others like him. If they were hostile before, imagine how they must feel now. DM

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