How to honour a generation

University of Cape Town (UCT) student activist Masixole Mlandu is a familiar face in student politics. Marking the 50th anniversary of 16 June 1976, he began by stating that learning is not neutral; it has to do with power and who has access to the learning space.

"That history is important now when considering who finds themselves in a university and who does not and what the future consequences of that are in terms of the politics and the solutions we are trying to find in the country," he said.

Mlandu witnessed his fair share of student protest action during the nationwide demonstrations against university fees that began in 2015. "It's not only about access to university spaces, but also about the type of orientation the university takes, the kind of knowledge system it is based on, the values it ascribes to and the direction it intends on going. Is the direction thinking about society in general? Thinking about the Soweto uprising, you realise that the deeper problem is black people's relationship with education."

Mlandu explained: "At the time, it was said in public spaces that Bantu education was meant to prepare black people for manual labour. Post-1994, we are told that education is supposed to be a conveying belt to the market: to get a job, one must be educated. However, we do know that it's not true [as we see it]. Many people who have gone to school remain unemployed precisely because of the structural problem of the country's unemployment crisis. Even if we are educated in our numbers, it does not deal with the problem of wealth, power and privilege being concentrated in the few, while the majority of people are still cast out of society."

"The issue of fees becomes a rallying point to all of us who think that education should not be a commodity."

He added: "We need education that will put the overwhelming majority [of people] first, in thinking about their problems, rather than education that wants to extract money and produce bourgeois grouping of people who care about making profit, rather than changing society."

UCT has not been immune to protests over the years. The most visible wave began when students challenged the symbols and signs that defined the institution, sparking a broader debate about belonging, identity and who feels truly included on campus. This led to #RhodesMustFall. What followed was a new question: once access to the institution had been secured, how could students remain there when rising fees seemed to outpace the years they spent studying? This led to #FeesMustFall. Then, in a city grappling with a deepening housing crisis, it was perhaps inevitable that these pressures would spill onto university campuses in the Cape, giving rise to #Shackville.

'We were not violent'

Speaking about #FeesMustFall, Mlandu said: "The issue of fees becomes a rallying point to all of us who think that education should not be a commodity. It should be a right that is earned by everyone; in this case, education is sold to the highest bidder who can afford [it]. Those who cannot are understood as not wanting to be educated, when in actual fact, we are dealing with systemic exclusion. This is important in igniting a sense of student activism that is not concerned about itself but concerned about the politics and dynamics of society at large.

"We were responding to the institutional violence of being told that as a people we don't deserve to be here."

"During our protest action days, we were not violent. We were responding to the institutional violence of being told that as a people we don't deserve to be here. This type of violence reproduces itself internally within students to the point where people don't want to relate to the university and end up dropping out."

Mlandu concluded: "It would be interesting to have an intergenerational dialogue to reflect on why certain issues from 50 years ago persist in society. We could honour the generation of 1976 by delivering to them a sustainable victory around structural reforms in education so that we can affect society in an impactful way."