Adam Haupt, The Con
The rise of
the #FeesMustFall movement in South Africa has revealed key fault lines. I
would like to offer two arguments here. The first is that the use of police
brutality against peaceful protesters on campuses undermines citizens’ rights
to free speech. The second is that the corporatisation of public institutions
produces the same negative effects on the public sphere as state repression of
dissent. Public institutions’ mandate to preserve an information commons is
undermined by an economic system that places a low premium on public spending.
Universities are thrown at the mercy of the market and, effectively, cost
barriers to education are introduced. It is in this way that any talk of a
national democratic revolution is reduced to empty rhetoric.
The #FeesMustFall
movement followed on from the success of the #RhodesMustFall movement at the
University of Cape Town, which led to the removal of a statue of controversial
colonialist Cecil John Rhodes from the campus. As #RMF activists will tell you,
it was never just about a statue. It was about starting a conversation about
decolonising universities in the global South.
Students at
the University of the Witswatersrand took the next step: they took issue with
the logic of neoliberal economics that governs access to public institutions.
If universities are going to decolonise, cost barriers to higher education need
to be eliminated. If the ruling party’s 1994 election promise of education for
all is to be realised, it will have to rethink its embrace of free market
fundamentalism. Blade Nzimande’s claim that he is a communist but the reality
is that we live in a capitalist world simply will not do at all. Government
needs to increase public spending to secure the interests of its citizens.
Wits set off a
national campaign that resulted in the shutdown of universities across the
country. The demand for free education was linked to calls for universities to
abandon the outsourcing of workers, often presented as a cost-cutting measure
to help universities function more efficiently. This takes us to the heart of
the corporatisation of universities. Just as South Africa became a democracy,
privatisation was embraced. This effectively ensured white minority corporate
interests were protected in the face of democratic change.
Outsourcing at
UCT, as one avenue through which this corporatisation took place in the 1990s
under the leadership of Dr Mamphela Ramphele, had serious consequences for
workers. Apart from low wages and precarious working conditions, workers would
not have access to benefits that accrue to other members of staff. For example,
academic and administrative staff members receive student fee rebates for
themselves and their family members. If such a key benefit were extended to
outsourced workers, UCT would become radically more accessible to youth from
Cape Flats townships. On Tuesday night, UCT management “made a commitment to
the principle of insourcing”. The details of how this will be implemented still
need to be made clear. Given that there are serious cost implications for
taking on this overhead cost, government will have to offer a clear message on
the extent to which it will increase spending on higher education.
The responses
to the work of student activists have varied. The media’s initial response was
to focus on what appeared to be the violence of students, even though students
adopted a policy of nonviolence. Last week’s march on the Union Buildings in
Pretoria was a good case in point. Despite the fact that certain students
attempted to escalate the event into a violent confrontation with police, the
majority of participants objected to their behaviour. Students have been wary
of having their cause being hijacked by political parties.
Likewise, at
UCT a peaceful march to Bremner building revealed it was the South African
Police Service (SAPS) that was active in raising tensions and initiating
unprovoked violence. It also revealed that UCT management’s first impulse was
to obtain an interdict and invite the police on to campus instead of engaging in
dialogue. In turn, the SAPS claimed it had a mandate to engage students with
force. This sets a dangerous precedent for dealing with peaceful protest on
university campuses in a democratic society. Students at the University of the
Western Cape also said they suffered injuries at the hands of the police last
Thursday night, despite the fact that an interdict against police action on
campuses in the Western Cape had been obtained. More recently, the #RMF
movement reported that a worker’s car was bombed in the early hours of Monday
morning on campus, and Wits students occupying the Senate building also had to
contend with a bomb scare recently. Meanwhile, in Grahamstown, Rhodes
University students’ activism was overshadowed by xenophobic attacks in surrounding
townships.
Activists also
say a certain measure of infiltration of the #FeesMustFall movement has been
taking place, and that it is clear that intimidation tactics are now being
employed. The response to #FeesMustFall has not been entirely positive, to say
the least, but this is not unique to the #FeesMustFall movement. For example,
members of the social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo has reported that they
have been harassed by the police in the past.
Another
troubling issue is that the SAPS initially took it upon itself to charge five
student activists with high treason, thereby reminding us of the Rivonia Trial
and Nelson Mandela and his comrades’ principled stance against apartheid. The
police later denied laying this charge against the students, but their action
managed to send shock waves through activist communities. Perhaps this was the
intention; it’s difficult to say. The SAPS also invoked the Regulation of
Gatherings Act for national key points to deal with students’ march on
Parliament last week. According to a statement by scholars from UCT’s law
faculty, their interpretation of this legislation was incorrect. The police did
not act in accordance with the law, they say.
Are
apartheid-era tactics being used to clamp down on constitutionally enshrined
rights to free expression and speech? To answer this question, consider the
context in which the #FeesMustFall movement came to the fore. President Jacob
Zuma recently defended the call for a media appeals tribunal despite widespread
condemnation of it as a mechanism of censorship. Likewise, we have seen the
approval of the Protection of State Information Bill, which is so wide in its
scope that almost any civil servant can classify any piece of information and
is at odds with the Constitution and the Promotion of Access to State
Information Act. The Film and Publication Board is also advancing a new policy
that will regulate online publication, something that has been criticised as an
attempt at censorship while pretending to be primarily about addressing child
pornography.
The attempts
to delegitimise or co-opt the work of social movements should therefore be read
in relation to this broader context – one in which attempts are being made to
stifle free speech by limiting citizens’ use of media, specifically online
media, and limit their ability to access knowledge that would force government
to be more accountable to the public. The information commons upon which
citizens in a democracy rely to make informed decisions about the common good
is under threat. Without a free flow of information into the public domain, the
public sphere cannot flourish. Effectively, South Africa will cease to be a
democracy.
In the context
of this discussion, there are two nemeses of democracy. The first is a state
that seeks to censor media and utilise police brutality to squash civic
protests. The second is a shift towards the corporatisation of public
institutions by treating education and knowledge production as commodities in
accordance with free market principles – so much so that it impoverishes the
information commons and inhibits a functional public sphere. Both nemeses thus
have the same negative effect on the public sphere.
#FeesMustFall,
which was actually a named a respondent in a court order sought by UCT last
week, has revealed key fault lines in leadership both at universities and in
government. A macroeconomic policy that places a low premium on education and
does not signal convincingly enough that spending in this area is a long-term
investment pushes universities to embrace the inevitable ‘logic’ of the market.
And, in the end, they fall far short of their mandate to serve the public in an
era when, ironically, universities are expected to transform. Thanks to the
rise of the corporate university and the attention it pays to branding and
marketing strategies – and thanks to a state that has yet to develop tangible
plans to fund this key area of development – we find ourselves in a context
where private interests prevail over the public interest.
