It’s January, so that means that South African universities are taking in new students: “freshers”. People who come from a system that is somehow way more nurturing than the one they’re about to enter. Academia is a dog eat dog world. It’s cutthroat in a lot of ways. Too many people have a lot to lose and those who are coming in probably also have things like “black tax” (the financial burden many black South Africans have of taking care of extended family) or even white tax – commonly known as getting your first car (jokes), but all in all, academia is a system that was never made with black people in mind. It’s still exclusive to western standards. So when South Africa’s black youth took to the streets and voiced their frustrations about university fees in a movement called Fees Must Fall, academia…dumped us.
Fees Must Fall was a national student led protest that started late 2015 in response to the government increasing university fees. The movement grew until late 2016 and resulted in the government increasing funding for universities. The main objectives of the protests were a 0% fee increase, free education for the poor and quality decolonized education. South Africa is 24 years young in it’s democracy and as a result, a large majority of black people remain underprivileged so if university fees are so high, black people are most likely to remain in the cycle of poverty.
There’s a narrative that “fallists” (the name given to protesting students) are uneducated, that they don’t want education but enjoy the thrill of protesting and being disruptive. Let me be blunt; that is utter garbage. There is nothing enjoyable about teargas, flying rubber bullets and fear. There’s nothing enjoyable about having to fight. No one has ever fought a system with a smile on their face and the fallists are/were no different. You forget that these people (a huge majority of which are black) are protesting for higher education – a worthy cause, right? Wrong. These protests seemed unworthy because as soon as black people turn their backs on western ideologies or principles, they’re doing so because “they’re not smart, they’re animals and they’re uneducated”. Even historically, when the youth protested against being taught in Afrikaans they were associated with barbarism. It was absolutely absurd to the government that anyone could ever want to disrupt such a superior system, despite the fact that the protesters felt oppressed, felt dehumanized and felt that they had to stand up for what they believe was right for them. We can definitely relate this to the Fees Must Fall movement and how the oppressed felt. Students know their struggles at home, financially and otherwise. They know when a system is stopping them from persevering, so they stood up for what they believed was right for them. Protesting students were academics before, during and after they started protesting.
During protests, it felt like universities turned their backs against students. Students were no longer students, they were imminent threats and had to be taken care of. 831 students were arrested during Fees Must Fall. That’s academia, though. To be an academic is to stand by and watch systems work, even if those systems that are harmful to you and/or others. To be an academic is to not make noise, not write a letter, be discrete, sweep it under the rug, keep the prestige intact, quiet down, like everything’s okay – especially when it’s not. Black people love order and maintenance as much as the next person, but when there is a fire, it is in our DNA to scream “FIRE!” We’re not gonna lie on the ground and roll over; we’re getting out and we won’t do it quietly. It doesn’t make us lesser people, and it doesn’t make us uneducated. It makes us magic… and human (fine, more human than magic).
So when students felt financially oppressed, they spoke up until the message was received. Protests having died down means that students, fallists and all have to return to their books and with that being said, there’s a lot of academic anxiety and uncertainty. Academia has to take us back. We need to reintegrate into the system with the hopes that what was broken has been fixed and that all that remains broken will be fixed.
The fact that in 2017, I feel compelled to speak about black academics specifically every time whenever I find myself in conversation about say literature for instance, because the atmosphere is that we need to reassure academia that we are worthy, we have accolades, we have great black people. This almost passive aggressive behavior between black people and academia is caused by the fact that this system was not made with us in mind. So there is a need to constantly bring up our credentials and homogenize us so that doors may open for us all. Despite our different backgrounds, despite our intersectionality, despite the different languages we speak, to academia, if one is not worthy then surely all of us aren’t.
I think that in order for South Africa to have a successful academic year, academia needs to do better, it needs to support us, it needs to support the government as much as the government supports universities and it needs to not abandon and distance itself from us when we speak up. We need to be able to protest for our rights without worrying about getting expelled or jailed.
There can only be peace if universities work with us.
