The Fees Must Fall movement at Wits, among other universities, has witnessed the escalation of violence and police brutality on campuses across the country. Police presence at universities has become a topic of serious concern. Last week Friday there was a meeting which was a call to action against police brutality.
The meeting was held at the Women’s Jail, Constitution Hill. The evening began with Tasneem Essop, the program director, welcoming everyone. Essop apologised for the delay and explained that there had been some technical difficulties. She said, “This initiative came from students who had faced police brutality over the last few weeks.” This was followed by the medics choir performing a few songs.
The first speaker was Professor Pitika Ntuli. The professor presented some of his poems while most of his talk dealt with the concept of decolonised education. He explained that decolonized education means that the syllabus needs to be decolonized. Prof. Ntuli mentioned chemistry as one example since “sangomas have discovered there are over 1000 medicinal plants, [yet] they are not even in your chemistry class.” He went on to explain how the meaning of knowledge in Zulu is by definition something that should be fought for. “In my language knowledge is ulwazi…ulwa means you fight or I fight- zi. Ulwazi by definition, knowledge is that which we have to fight for.” In conclusion Prof. Ntuli said that decoloniality goes beyond colonization and post-coloniality; that it is an analytic agenda, theory and political practice.
After Prof. Ntuli spoke, Xola Nohaji-Mkoko, a fifth year medical student, gave an account of what medical students have experienced at the forefront of the Fees Must Fall protests at Wits this year. Nohaji-Mkoko recalled the experience of the first student she helped who had suffered severe facial burns after a stun grenade exploded on a sitting crowd of students. Nohaji-Mkoko went to Milpark Hospital to check on the student, when she arrived she was surprised to find no one had settled the bill. She also commented on the attitude of medical personnel, saying that “nobody cared about the fact that this was a first year student who was sitting in a peaceful crowd fighting for a very just cause.”
Nohaji-Mkoko described the weeks that followed to be a rollercoaster. She said, “As a group of medics we treated more than 400 injuries.” Most of the injuries treated were burns and bullet wounds. Nohaji-Mkoko also said that some of the students they had treated “had been waiting at public hospitals for days and hadn’t been seen because they didn’t have medical aid and they were far away from home.” For Nohaji-Mkoko, the most heart breaking day for her was when “the police came down and they shot into campus health at students who were injured and who were seeking refuge.”
She further commented on how the university failed to provide ambulances and the decision to continue with exams. She said, “We saw hundreds of police on campus…but a university as prestigious as Wits University couldn’t arrange for a single ambulance to be on campus to assist students.” Nohaji-Mkoko went on to reflect on Wits management’s description of the situation on campus as “nothing but normal”. She said, “It is scary, it is terrifying and it is paralyzing. We are in no state to write exams and we are in no state to give up the fight for free decolonized education.” Nohaji-Mkoko ended off by asking South Africans to support students in the way that universities and the state had failed to do. “Our only hope really is South Africa and we hope that you will rise up as our mothers, our fathers, our brothers and our sisters and walk this journey to its logical conclusion.”
Professor Pumla Gqola was the next speaker who began by saying that it would be a lie to say she was happy to be there: “I don’t want to be here but I also know that I can’t not be here, we all have to be here.” During her talk, Prof. Gqola mostly focused on the issue of transformation and the kinds of spaces that universities create. She explained that blatant failures of transformation are the reason why this is not a time to be quiet. Prof. Gqola further said that students were dealing with the failures of the previous generation as they “have to deal with what transformation could not achieve.”
Prof. Gqola spoke about the kind of spaces that universities occupy. She said, “People make all sorts of weird assumptions about universities as the place of logic, the place of fairness… know that universities are also minefields of mediocrity and brutality.” Prof. Gqola went on to say that universities have always been brutal spaces; it is in this space that fallists have shown who matters at universities. She said, “Part of what our universities are continuing to do is to perpetuate a society that says people do not matter when they are black and poor.”
Prof. Gqola also spoke about the current climate as being a time for truth, rage and action. She explained that there are a number of things that people need to be honest about; one of these truths being the kind of society that this generation of students are creating. Prof. Gqola further said that both academics and South Africans at large need “to recognize that this generation of students is the only hope we have.” She concluded by speaking of the choice people must make to either allow students to “withdraw into a less free, more brutalised, more militarised police state or we can stand with them…amplify their voice, support them, be true allies.”
Prof. Gqola’s speech was followed by a short break in which the medic choir sang a few songs, which lifted the mood as people stood up to dance and sing along. After which Frene Ginwala and Yvonne Mokgoro read out a statement by the Women’s collective. Before reading the statement, Ginwala began by saying that “After what we have heard so far this evening, no one deserves to feel this way.” Ginwala reflected on the birth of democracy in South Africa as a time when “we were filled with hope and expectation of a better world for our youth. We still have that hope and we have had achievements, change may have been slow, but it is inevitable.”
Excerpt from Statement by the Women’s collective
After Ginwala and Mokgoro read the statement, Shaeera Kalla addressed the audience. Kalla said, “All we ever wanted was to change the reality that being intelligent is not good enough if you are poor and if you are black.” Kalla went on to speak about her experience of being shot 13 times and what she has reflected on during her time out. She said, “twenty-two years into democracy, young people are still being neglected and experiences such as these led us to sitting down at the gates of Empire road last year on October 14 to shut Wits down.” Kalla went on to describe the shutdown as a symbolic war on the status quo. Kalla explained that “Fees must fall is the sharpest and sincerest reminder that if we do not share the country’s wealth, we will share in its destruction.”
Kalla recalled the day when she was shot 13 times in the back. Kalla said she “can still picture the anger in their eyes [police], the hatred you could almost taste it.” Despite what happened Kalla said that she does not see the police as her enemy and does not think that students should either. She questioned “What drives grown men to shoot at their children? What does that do to a person?” Kalla’s response: “The police are victims of this violent system… they are subject to the humiliation and indignity of the system and we are fighting that system for them and for their children.”
Following Kalla’s speech, two students spoke about their experiences. The first student, who had been injured during the protests, reflected on how the experience had shaped her in many ways. The second student described his experience of being arrested and the impact it had him on and his friends that had been arrested with him. The evening ended with Yvonne Chaka Chaka’s performance.
The evening was full of a variety of insights into the Fees Must Fall movement. All the speakers showed the necessity for further discussion on this topic.
