by Staff Reporter | Aug 22, 2015 | News
by Zimasa Mpemnyama and Litaletu Zidepa
The Wits SRC has responded to the recent suspensions of seven students by the Wits University Council last night. The Economic Freedom Fighters have also responded arguing the situation is unfair.
Student Representative Council (SRC) president Shaeera Kalla has condemned the Wits University Council’s decision to suspend seven students as well as the Wits Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) as a recognised club and society.
Speaking to Wits Vuvuzela, Kalla said that most, but not all, of the seven students suspended were members of the Wits EFF.
Kalla said the actions of the council amounted to student victimisation. “The process of identifying students who have breached code of conducts and then taking disciplinary action against them has been unjustifiably fast tracked by the VC [Vice Chancellor Adam Habib] and this is unacceptable,” she said.
“The VC has suspended seven students with immediate effect a month before exams, this affects their academics and this is an academic institution.”
Kalla criticised the consistency of the university in dealing with matters of misconduct around Tuesday’s SRC debate which descended into a brawl.
“Some organisations who were involved have not been demonized the way in which the EFF has and this is against every principle of accountability, responsibility and transparency,” she said.
Speaking to news channel eNCA earlier today, Wits EFF member Anele Nzimande said that the university used the personal Twitter accounts of Wits EFF members for the investigation which she said was unfair because, “they put a target on your back and they come after you”.
Kalla also commented on the processes of investigation the university used: “The VC cannot decide when he wants to fast track processes and when he wants to follow due process, an investigation into the matter and the extenuating circumstances of how it actually happened must roll out before any judgement is carried out and extrajudicial processes should not be used as is the case here.”
Nzimande also said the university was hypocritical over matters of “rules, law and authority” and accused it of violating labour law in relation to workers in the Matrix and Campus Control.
“Wits has this moral high ground that they are law abiding citizens, they follow the rules and they can judge when students are deviating from the rules, when they are not following the law themselves,” she told ENCA.
In an official statement released by EFF acting national spokesperson, Fana Mokoena, the party said it was suspicious of the timing of the suspensions, suggesting they were the result of political interference. “We also know that the university is being controlled by politicians who are determined to kill the EFF and its footprint from the university. It is not the first time this apartheid university has mistreated our members.” Read the full statement here.
Wits EFF secretary Mbe Mbhele took to Twitter to voice out his dismay at their suspension, “First thing I thought of when I was told to vacate the university is my mother. My suspension reminded me that SA is a fatherless nation.”
The EFF’s Mbuyiseni Ndlozi said on Twitter: “When a university casts a critical student out, it only shows it has lost an argument, refused its duty to educate; thus has failed society.”
The council said in the statement that the university is still investigating the matter.
Related stories:
Wits Vuvuzela, STORIFY: Mixed reactions to student suspensions at Wits, August 22, 2015
Wits Vuvuzela, Timeline: the SRC campaign so far, August 22, 2015
Wits Vuvuzela, SRC debate investigated, August 21, 2015
by Staff Reporter | Aug 21, 2015 | Lifestyle
To the editor of the Wits Vuvuzela,
I am writing as a concerned student in response to the Wits Vuvuzela’s article “One Million, One Month falls short” which appeared on the front page of the August 7 edition.
Let me start by making a point. Initiatives like the One Million, One Month campaign, the Wits Humanitarian Fund and other similar programs rely on trust and confidence. People only donate to programmes and organisations if they trust that they can achieve their aims. In consequence, humanitarian programs are vulnerable. If they are misrepresented or if their legitimacy is challenged it has repercussions, not only for the programs themselves, but for the people who rely on these programs. When people stop donating, those who need it most cannot be helped.
It’s an important point because in the article, the One Million, One Month campaign was misrepresented. The article was titled “One Million, One Month falls short” but the details raised in the article suggest precisely the opposite. The intention of the program was never to support all 2 788 students financially. To suggest so is to fundamentally underestimate the scale of the crisis in the National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). I’d pose the question to your readers: How much do you think it would cost to fully fund 2 788 students at Wits? R1-million? R10-million? The answer in fact is R178-million, the shortfall in what NSFAS was supposed to pay out and what was available.
The R1-million target the SRC set for the campaign was a target they felt would be realistic to raise in one month, and I know from helping as a volunteer that raising the funds was extremely difficult. Although the SRC ended up far exceeding the target they set, the NSFAS crisis is of the magnitude that even that was, and remains, a drop in the ocean. The SRC repeatedly made the point, both to affected students and in press statements, that this campaign was not a solution to the NSFAS crisis but an emergency response by students to aid as many affected students as was possible. The One Million, One Month campaign did not fall short. Quite to the contrary, the campaign itself raised R1.8-million, almost double its goal of R1-million at the end of the month, and at last check the humanitarian fund had received R4.4-million in donations through the year, almost entirely due to the success of the One Million, One Month campaign and the exposure it created.
The media plays an important role in society and it is the responsibility of the media to hold institutions and programs accountable, but that is unfortunately not what has happened here. This was misrepresentation. It may not have been intentional, but it has a very real effect on those students at Wits who are currently beneficiaries of the work done by the One Million, One Month campaign and those who will benefit from the Wits humanitarian fund in the future. I implore the Wits Vuvuzela, both now and in the future, to take extra care in the research and portrayal of issues and initiatives like this. The fact is the media has power. How that power is used is up to every journalist and editor at this paper. Wield it wisely.
Dylan Barry, 2nd year BSc
One Million, One Month campaign subcommittee member
by Staff Reporter | Jun 12, 2015 | News
NEW TOOLS: Laura Grant of the Mail&Guardian demonstrated some new applications for producing digital journalism. PHOTO: Katleho Sekhotho.
The 2015 Menell Media Exchange conference started today at Maslow Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg.
Some of South Africa’s most respected journalists, media practitioners, educators and students joined international visitors and guests for the second Menell Media Exchange conference.
Peter Ndoro, Lester Kiewet and Jeremy Maggs were some of the prominent speakers and guests on the first day of the conference in Sandton, Johannesburg, which focused primarily on training and workshops.
Themed as “innovation, brand and sustainability”, the opening panels focused on brand building by individuals and journalists in particular. Veteran journalist Gus Silber provided key insights into the use of social media for journalism and as a tool for journalists to increase their visibility.
The Mail & Guardian’s Laura Grant and SABC’s Tegan Bedser, demonstrated various apps that can be used in digital storytelling.
Jeremy Maggs joined eNCA’s Patrick Conroy on a panel that explored the difficult subject of funding journalism in ways that does not impede it.
Andrew Phelps, senior product manager for the New York Times, gave the afternoon keynote address and stressed the importance of innovation in newsrooms.
The conference continues tomorrow.
by Staff Reporter | May 18, 2015 | Featured 1, News
by Russell H. Kaschula, Rhodes University
A history lecturer teaching a class about the history of the Xhosa people in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province stops speaking English for a few minutes. She switches to isiXhosa, the home language of nearly 80% of the Eastern Cape’s residents. Although she translates the phrases she is using, students in the class later complain that they felt excluded when she spoke a language they didn’t understand.
This is not a hypothetical scenario. It happened earlier this year in a lecture hall at Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape – and it proves just how reluctant some students at African higher education institutions are to embrace language as a resource. These students, who are often monolingual, cling stubbornly to the familiar comfort of English and don’t realise just how much they are short-changing themselves intellectually.
There are 11 official languages in South Africa. English comes in behind isiZulu, isiXhosa and Afrikaans as only the fourth most commonly spoken tongue. An estimated 2000 languages are spoken across the African continent.
Bearing these figures in mind, it is striking that African languages do not have pride of place at the continent’s institutions. Why are they sidelined in some many lecture halls and discussion groups? The answer lies in our collective history: colonialism made us look down on everything that is African. This includes our languages, cultures and religions.
But it is time to reclaim this space as part of the African transformation agenda. It’s hardly a radical notion – the rest of the so-called first world demands recognition of mother tongues. Germans teach and learn in German. The British learn in English. South Koreans learn in Korean. In Africa we learn largely through languages that are not our own, like English, French and Portuguese.
It is a myth to suggest that one is superior to another. What can be articulated, studied and negotiated in one tongue can be done in any other language. Now we need the political will to teach and boost different languages.
Taking big strides
There are changes happening in some South African universities. The University of KwaZulu-Natal has made isiZulu a compulsory first-year subject. At Rhodes University, journalism students must pass an isiXhosa for journalism course at either mother tongue or second language level.
| VIDEO: A quick lesson in how to pronounce isiXhosa ‘click’ sounds. |
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Also at Rhodes, I have this year started teaching a language and society, or Ulwimi noluntu, course. The classes are conducted in English and isiXhosa concurrently. This space brings students back to the centre of the debate about the role universities serve in African society and what sort of graduates should be produced.
Students who are normally quiet in class now ask many more questions because they are allowed to do so in their mother tongue. Students will submit evaluations in the next few months and I am recording all of the lectures. I hope to use the course as a possible model for bilingual teaching.
The University of Limpopo’s bilingual course in English and multilingual studies, taught in Sesotho sa Leboa and English, is a shining example of how to bolster the status of African languages.
Elsewhere on the continent, Ethiopia’s Adama Science and Technology University uses Afan Oromo bilingually with English in its classrooms.
There is a lot more to be done
African universities need to identify key local languages as the media of instruction and encourage students to speak these at the level of a mother tongue. This is in the interests of better cognition and conceptual understanding, the core business of any university.
These languages should also be taught as second languages to bolster social cohesion between students from different linguistic and cultural groups across Africa.
This is a way to create real understanding and could help diffuse the sort of xenophobic violence that erupted again in South Africa in April.
Breaking down the barriers
History will judge African universities harshly one day when the youth of the time arise and ask: “Who gave someone the right to decide in which language and about which languages I should learn?”
Universities must work hard to undo the disconnect that’s been created between African people and intellectual thought. Research shows that you think best in your mother tongue. Negative attitudes towards multilingualism and multiculturalism are stopping us from using Africa’s own languages in prestigious domains like education and the sciences.
The discussion around language is actually about the transformation and Africanisation of the continent’s universities. We must identify how to use languages to re-establish the African voice in universities. This will require research and curricula that robustly engage with issues of transformation so that universities escape the trap of simply reproducing knowledge that already exists.
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Russell H. Kaschula is Professor of African Language Studies at Rhodes University.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
by Staff Reporter | May 13, 2015 | Featured 1
by Jennifer M. Case, University of Cape Town
South Africa is in the grip of a skills shortage. Among the top ten skills needed to boost its lacklustre economic growth are civil, mechanical, industrial and chemical engineers.
But of the just more than 3000 students the Department of Higher Education and Training estimated would sign up to do an engineering degree in South Africa this year, fewer than half will graduate after five years.
South Africa’s isn’t alone in struggling to get engineering students from enrolment to graduation. In the US only about 50% of engineering students complete their degrees, according to research published in the Journal of Engineering Education. In Australia the figure isn’t much higher.
But South Africa faces a particularly difficult post-apartheid challenge. It needs to increase the number of black university graduates across all disciplines as a form of intellectual and economic redress. Its skilled workforce must reflect the demographics of a country whose population is around 90% black.
The problem is exacerbated by South Africa’s troubled public school system, which battles to produce students equipped for pursuing tough degrees like engineering at university level. Even if students do make it into an engineering degree, they are extremely likely to drop out before completing their studies.
Despite the problem being widespread and seemingly intractable, various attempts continue to be made to overcome it. One of the earliest was started in the chemical engineering department at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in the mid-1980s. The department’s classes were largely white and male and the graduation rates were low. A few black students were enrolled but their success rates were poorer than those of their white peers.
UCT approached its industry partners for a frank discussion. They set out to find a way to teach engineering students from disadvantaged backgrounds effectively.
A quarter-century of change
Nearly 30 years later, UCT engineering undergraduate enrolment rates have risen and white students make up less than 40% of the South African students in the programme. By 2011, the programme posted an overall graduation rate of nearly 70%, with dramatically improved rates for black students.
A group of higher education researchers and I recently worked with data to build a case study of how change can happen in a university department. One of our key questions was: What makes educational change possible?
We wanted to take a long-term view because so much of our present discourse on social shortcomings – particularly in education – fails to do so.
Exploring academic development in the mainstream
During the 1980s, driven by the needs of an increasingly diverse student body, South African universities began to develop a new way of thinking about academic development.
Since then, much work has focused on foundation programmes that offer students a different route of access to the regular “mainstream” programmes. A policy statement released by the South African government in 2005 suggested that:
The introduction of funding for foundation programmes, as well as the
provision of development funds for teaching should contribute [to enhancing the quality of throughput and graduation rates] … In this
regard, it is important to ensure that attention is paid to developing foundation programmes in scarce skills areas.
But what happens after the foundation programme?
The experience of UCT’s chemical engineering department over 25 years is an interesting example of what can be termed “academic development in the mainstream”. This is exciting because it opens the door to universities exploring different routes to greater inclusivity, and explores a space that traditional foundation programmes have not occupied before.
Here is how it was done.
First, an independent Advisory Board was established for the chemical engineering department. Its members were recruited from key positions in South African industries – a sign that the department was building closer links with business and was receptive to its views.
From its side, industry did not buy any arguments that low success rates were inescapable in engineering. The board also rejected the idea of a separate academic programme for black students and urged the engineering department to prioritise the social integration of its student body. It was convinced that an energetic department with a strong academic base should be able to build an undergraduate programme that could make help students from a broad range of social backgrounds succeed.
A few years later, a large industry donation led to the creation of an academic post in the department to focus on academic development. I have held this post since 1996.
The department also made changes to its curriculum and introduced new approaches to teaching. They established a first-year engineering course, improved industry exposure at the junior levels and developed better systems for advising undergraduate students.
Lessons from the journey
These are three key lessons from the chemical engineering department’s metamorphosis.
First, rather than making pejorative statements about its students, the department took a positive approach and emphasised success even when pass rates in courses might have suggested otherwise. I found this quite striking when examining 25 years of departmental deliberations.
Second, the department did not shy away from critical feedback. It did ongoing research and then shared the findings, even when the results reflected poorly on it. For example, a key study showed how good intentions in building a new design course were not being carried through to the level of assessment and feedback.
Third, industry’s demands were a significant spur to change.
On some scores, these changes could be considered modest because they were driven in collaboration with industry, and by a department needing particular outcomes. However, given the persistent challenges in the South African university landscape, the experience of UCT’s chemical engineering department deserves attention.
*Jennifer M. Case is Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering at University of Cape Town.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
by Staff Reporter | May 11, 2015 | Featured 1, News
Former Wits Vuvuzela journalist, Shandukani Mulaudzi, reflects on her visit to a transit refugee camp in Chatsworth, Durban.
After spending a week in Kwazulu-Natal on holiday, I knew I could not leave the province without going to one of the camps set up in aid of foreign nationals who were escaping xenophobic violence in South Africa.
I had no idea what to expect, but after hearing news reports most camps were near empty, I thought there would be very few people there by the time of my visit at the end of April.
I was shocked by the number of people who remained displaced after the spate of attacks earlier in the month. Almost 1 700 people were now living at the camp in Chatsworth, according to Max Henderson, one of the volunteers I spoke with.
Henderson told us that most of the people in the Chatsworth Camp were from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. More recently some people from Somalia had joined the camp from another Isipingo. Henderson said another 200 DRC nationals were expected to arrive in Chatsworth due to the imminent closure of the Isipingo camp. He also told us that 40 buses would be coming from Malawi to fetch their citizens.
“Grown men started running across to the vans only to sit down and wait to be called up to receive one sandwich”
Under a tree, volunteers were calling out people’s names and giving them the papers they needed to go back to their home countries. While some of the citizens of Malawi were happy to go back because they feared for their lives in South Africa, many were sad to be returning as they needed to work in South Africa, according to one of the volunteers.
On the other side of the field, police vans were being offloaded with boxes full of peanut butter sandwiches and small sachets of drinking water.
Grown men started running across to the vans only to sit down and wait to be called up to receive one sandwich and two packets of water each.
Some tried to push in but were called back by volunteers as an act of fairness towards those who arrived first.
While watching the people in line for food, I noticed a couple come to the front of the line because they had a child with them.
Seeing this couple made me realise how few women and children are at the camp, my only assumption is that they were first priority when people were repatriated.
“Overwhelmed by the living conditions”
I was at the camp for about 20 minutes but in that short space of time I was overwhelmed by the living conditions. The tents could not have comfortably housed the more than 2 500 people who were at the camp initially. The spaces must have been very cramped for all who were forced into them.
There were mobile toilets in place, but the only way the residents could bath was with buckets using cold tap water.
The over-flowing rubbish bins were placed far too closely near the tents that people slept in.
I have no doubt in my mind that all the volunteers and police tried their best to make sure people were as comfortable as possible, but the lack of dignity and freedom of living on an open field far away from the places people called home, cannot be ignored.
What I have struggled with the most is that the people who inflicted this violence on our foreign nationals also live in less than desirable conditions. Getting mad at the foreign nationals for the socio-economic problems that have led to their frustration is something I cannot simply do. But after seeing what I saw I want to find someone to blame.
We could have dialogues about the causes of xenophobic violence but the truth is our privilege as people who do not live in poverty keeps us disjointed from the communities we so desperately seek to serve.
My middle class privilege allowed me to walk into the camp, give some food, be sad, then walk out again and whenever I choose to, I can forget.
My twenty minute heartbreak however, is someone else’s daily experience – it’s their reality.
by Staff Reporter | May 9, 2015 | Opinion
By Sibulele Mgudlwa
Sibulela Mgudlwa was the 2012-2013 Wits SRC President. He shares his thoughts on the ‘I love Hitler’ comments made by Mcebo Dlamini.
OPINION: Former Wits SRC President Sibulele Mgudlwa gives his opinion on the case of Mcebo Dlamini. Photo: Pheladi Sethusa
Well, Hitler was an animal who had no limits to his brutality. But one thing about the recent comments of SRC President Mcebo Dlamini about Adolf Hitler is that they have created a lot of healthy debate around many issues. But they’ve also created their fair share of retrogressive opinions joining the discourse and these must be squashed immediately.
Perhaps to be more specific, there’s a laughable notion that suggests that a love for Hitler directly translates into a love for the colonialist Cecil Rhodes. Some people have cunningly, and perhaps insidiously, introduced the idea that those who love Hitler or his style of leadership automatically love Cecil Rhodes and other white supremacists. It’s a very lazy view that seeks to reverse the gains made by the #RhodesMustFall movement. Zapiro certainly takes this view further in his recent cartoon by depicting Wits as a Hitler-loving and transformation-hating university, in direct contrast to the more “forward-thinking”, Rhodes-hating University of Cape Town. Well this is plain silly.
Lessons can be learnt from Adolf Hitler
There’s a whole lot we can learn from the Hitler and the period of history he lived in. Appreciating some aspects of that portion of history and their relevance today does not necessarily mean you’re against transformation or that you’re a raging, rabid racist intent on killing white people. We can study the energy and passion of Germans living during the Nazi era, who wholeheartedly stood behind a common cause (albeit a terrible one) and use it in our own country in the fight for radical economic emancipation of the most needy in society.
In addition to that, we can also use the Hitler period to expose the glaring hypocrisy of the Israeli regime; a country which today happily and determinedly runs their very own concentration camp which would have made Hitler beam with pride in their very own backyard. We know only too well that in Gaza the life of a Palestinian is as disposable as a Jew in Nazi Germany . The sheer barbarism of the Holocaust is a critical lesson from the Hitler legacy that we can, and must, understand; an event that should never again happen in our society.
“Perhaps the biggest lesson in all of this is that we, as varsity students, must learn to accept complex and multi-dimensional views that don’t just have one side to them.”
The Hitler legacy also teaches us how to deal with our scars from apartheid. The way Germans dealt with Hitler and Nazi symbols after his rule should serve as an educating process on how to deal with those who offend our values as South Africans.
Hendrik Verwoerd still celebrated in South Africa
How is it that the man who conceptualized and implemented one of the biggest crimes against humanity in history, the ‘architect of apartheid’ Hendrik Verwoerd is still celebrated by many South Africans who name streets after him and erect his statues? Verwoerd and Rhodes and what they stood for is as offensive to us as Hitler was to Germans. Surely we must be as impatient with our colonial symbols as post-Nazi Germany was with Nazi symbolism (which today is illegal in that country). We must learn a thing or four from the Germans who refused to be associated with leaders who violated their beliefs.
Perhaps the biggest lesson in all of this is that we, as varsity students, must learn to accept complex and multi-dimensional views that don’t just have one side to them. We must be able and willing to engage views that offend us with high levels of maturity and soberness. It really doesn’t help much when we retreat and hide in our stereotypical corners whenever our core beliefs are contested. Otherwise why are we in university? Lastly, we must refuse to be punished and persecuted by anyone (particularly vice chancellors) for airing views which don’t sit well with them or their friends. This is a learning space.
We are not, after all, in Nazi Germany.
by Staff Reporter | May 6, 2015 | News
The Wits Vuvuzela received this letter from one of the students of Wits University in the aftermath of the debate around the then Wits SRC President’s comments about Hitler. The author was hopeful that we would publish it and, while is known to us, wanted to remain anonymous to the public for personal reasons. We have reviewed this letter and feel that the arguments presented in it are editorially relevant as it advances the debate around race in South Africa.
For this reason we have decided to publish this letter and have respected the authors wishes to remain anonymous. The opinions expressed below are the writer’s own and not that of Wits Vuvuzela
Sometimes it is hard to speak. Words are meant to articulate feelings, thoughts and emotions. But, how do I even begin to say anything, when the world has no interest in hearing me speak.
BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS REEMERGES: Steve Biko believed that black people did not possess the power to be racist Photo: Flickr
Why is it that life can continue as normal when black people get mowed down in front of our eyes? In Ferguson, in New York and in Marikana, black life is cheap.
Why are white people allowed to live with the atrocities created by the Bush administration in Afghanistan? Why are they excused from the mass extermination of the Herero and Nama people in Namibia by Germans? How are they able to live knowing that the Atlantic slave trade, where more than two million Africans perished, was managed and carried out by white people?
These are the questions that swirled around in me, when the media frenzy around the Wits SRC president’s statements about the German fascist leader, Adolf Hitler, began last week. The outrage that his Facebook post solicited is worth thinking more deeply about. Hitler was a fascist and racist leader, traits never to be admired. But I posit that he is seen as a “freak of nature” because he dared to lay hands on white bodies. He dared to “Niggerise” white people.
Tamara ‘Kil Ja Kim’ Nopper, an academic and race theorist, puts it beautifully, “white people are viewed as human. What this means is that when white people suffer, as some who are poor/female/queer do, they nevertheless are able to have some measure of sympathy for their plight simply because they are white and their marginalization is considered an emergency, crisis or an issue to be concerned about.”
“The ‘black’ was created through a process of dehumanisation”
When the Jewish holocaust is invoked, Jewish people temporarily feel the pain, shame, humiliation and anger that is a permanent part of the black lived experience. In our collective imaginations, whiteness is exempt from pain and suffering – that is reserved for the black.
So as crude as Dlamini’s comments might have been, they bring into focus a larger discussion that needs to be had in South Africa. We need to define whiteness in relation to the creation of blackness through slavery and land dispossession.
How do we define racism? Can black people be racist? How do we balance the scales when whites were the beneficiaries of slavery and colonialism – systems built on black blood and sweat? What does it feel like to be a black person in a world defined by a global white power structure?
It is important to understand that the current system that exploits black people was man-made. The ‘black’ was created through a process of dehumanisation. Slavery, colonisation and systematic disenfranchisement of the ‘black’ was written into law and exacerbated through practice.
The American writer and academic Frank Wilderson III, argues that the Atlantic slave trade transformed “Africans into blacks” – a politically loaded term now associated with being uncivilised, savageness, and anti-humanness. In those ships unimaginable gratuitous violence visited African bodies. The African became a commodity and no longer a person. They lost their humanity. This gratuitous violence has characterised black life ever since. This is because; in order to maintain the systems that only allow whites to be “human” – (white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy) – blackness has to exist. Blacks have to remain racially inferior and poor.
On the question of racism, many Africana scholars and philosophers have examined the question of racism in relation to black people.
I’ll quote four thinkers to illustrate that indeed, as Dlamini and so many others have said, BLACKS CAN’T BE RACIST.
One of the greatest minds to come out of South Africa in the last half-century, Stephen Bantu Biko, defined racism as, “we [black people] do not have the power to subjugate anyone … Racism does not only imply exclusion of one race by another it always presupposes that the exclusion is for the purpose of subjugation”.
Philosopher and professor, Mabogo More, agrees with Biko when he says, “racism, therefore, is not discrimination alone, but also the power to control the lives of those excluded”.
Ambalavaner Sivanandan, novelist and director of the Institute of Race Relations in London, puts the nail in the coffin on the ‘blacks are racists too’ statement. He says, “it is the acting out of racial prejudice and not racial prejudice itself that matters… Racism is about power not about prejudice.”
In his important essay, Blacks Can’t Be Racist, Andile Mngxitama aptly puts it, “to make the concept of racism elastic, as to include whites as victims, is to render it useless, and more importantly, to make it susceptible to appropriation by the very beneficiaries of racism”.
“When we scream “fuck you” to the world, our words dissolve into a vacuum”
What all these thinkers have in common is the idea that racism requires power. The power to subjugate. To oppress. What power do blacks have in a system that is designed to supress and alienate them? What does a black person saying “fuck you” to a white person do to a greater system that oppresses blacks collectively?
Black words are impotent. When we scream “fuck you” to the world, our words dissolve into a vacuum, causing no harm. What power does a colonised people have over its coloniser? Can a slave master wake up tomorrow and claim that they are being oppressed by their slave?
White people can never dissociate themselves from the violence their wealth is built on. White people, consciously and unconsciously preserve whiteness by the very act of denying their white privilege. To deny the violence that their wealth and power is built on, is to continuously deny black people the space to speak about their pain.
Black people should never forget what Biko said about white liberals. Those “bunch of do-gooders” who acknowledge their “white privilege” and insert themselves into black struggles, diluting and sucking them dry of any radical potential.
Only black people understand the true burden of blackness. Black people get no breaks! Our skin is heavy! As Frank Wilderson III says, “our skin magnetizes bullets”. Our presence elicits violence from the white world. And as the South African art critic Athi Joja puts it, there is “something agonising about blackness, its definition in the world, as that which is sucked to invisibility by the displacing parasitic presence of whiteness.”
The incident with Mcebo Dlamini, provides South Africa with a great opportunity to re-evaluate our positions on race and racism. To re-evaluate our hypocrisy. To ask questions that we have actively been avoiding to ask for the past 21 years. A radical, critical race discourse requires honesty. To build a new world where race and racism won’t be a factor, some reflection will be required. This reflection won’t be easy.
Perhaps we may find out that we first need to destroy in order to then rebuild!
*The author of the letter is a student at Wits University, who has chosen to remain anonymous.
by Staff Reporter | Apr 16, 2015 | Featured 1, News
Wits vice–chancellor Prof Adam Habib has released a statement on behalf of the university, condemning the xenophobic attacks that have taken place across South Africa in recent weeks.
“Dear Members of the Wits Community
Wits University strongly condemns all forms of xenophobia and the brutal acts of violence taking place throughout our country. These acts are unacceptable, inhumane and a clear violation of basic human rights.
Our deepest condolences go out to the victims of these outrageous, violent acts, some of whom have tragically lost their lives in recent days.
Wits further condemns the comments made by persons who occupy positions of power and who through their irresponsible remarks, have the ability to influence the actions of our citizens. This condemnation extends to the failure of government to hold these individuals accountable for their comments.
The blatant lack of leadership on this matter from the highest levels of government is also of serious concern. Now more than ever, clear messages need to be sent to all sectors of our society, without any ambiguity.
At Wits, we are fundamentally opposed to discrimination and will not tolerate any form of xenophobic behaviour on our campuses. Should any staff member, student or visitor experience acts of xenophobia or feel unsafe in any way on campus, we ask that you contact Campus Control on (011) 717-4444 or (011) 717-6666 at any time.
If you are beyond our campuses, you can report violent incidents or threats thereof via the UNHCR xenophobia hotline on 0825708779. The UNHCR then sends the message to the SAPS and their implementing partners on the ground for verification and response.
Thank you.
PROF. ADAM HABIB
VICE-CHANCELLOR AND PRINCIPAL”
by Staff Reporter | Apr 15, 2015 | Featured 1
Dr Vashna Jaganath, lecturer at Rhodes University. Photo: Courtesy Vashna Jaganath.
The extraordinary rejuvenation of student politics in South African universities has enabled a moment of real possibility. It is imperative that we seize this moment to have an honest conversation about racism in wider society, and in universities like UCT (University of Cape Town) and Rhodes, and to act to effect real change, writes Dr Vashna Jaganath.
I studied history at the former University of Natal in Durban where Keith Breckenridge and Catherine Burns built an extraordinary department, of the highest academic quality. The African experience was taken seriously, black thinkers were taken seriously and black students flourished. I am one of many black people that found my way into an academic life as a direct result of the space that was created in the Department of Historical Studies in Durban.
Moving to Grahamstown to work at Rhodes University was a profound shock to my sense of myself and my place in the world. Grahamstown started out as a fort on the colonial frontier. It remains an evidently colonial town, one that wears its settler history with pride. The colonial mentality that pervades the town has a clear presence within the University itself. In various ways the university, and a few streets around the campus, still remain very much a bastion of white power, looking up at the hills where the dispossessed black population live.
“Here, in both the university and the town, racism is a routine feature of everyday life”
Today the white section of town is guarded by private security companies rather than a colonial militia. But in the heart of the white part of town, in the university, whiteness is still taken as normal context for academic life and as a mark of excellence.
Here, in both the university and the town, racism is a routine feature of everyday life. Like other black students and staff members I have accumulated a long list of anecdotes, most of which recount experiences that would be unimaginable in the spaces in which I lived, worked and socialised in Durban. When I started working at Rhodes University I went to the library to arrange access. A white librarian told me that I was lying when I told her that I was a newly appointed member of the academic staff. I returned in tears., On one occasion, at a meeting of the transformation committee, it was assumed that I am not an academic member of staff.
“I myself suffer panic attacks when I have to return to the racism that asphyxiates me in Grahamstown”
Like many black staff members, and many black post-graduate students too, I have never felt at home at Rhodes or in Grahamstown. In order to survive the constant diminishment of our personhood, and the consequent mutilation of self, many black staff members and post-graduate students have to spend large amounts of time, sometimes hours a day, offering support to each other. Strong people are frequently reduced to tears. I myself suffer panic attacks when I have to return to the racism that asphyxiates me in Grahamstown after time spent in Durban or Johannesburg, cities in which I can breathe freely.
When I first arrived at Rhodes the university had attracted some national attention as a place where there was a discussion about white privilege. I personally found this discussion to be hugely problematic. It seemed to me that this discussion simply functioned to cast the white person publicly bewailing their privilege as the most ethical person in the room while avoiding any kind of discussion about building the kind of alliances and taking the kind of action that could achieve real change.
It was also immediately evident to me that at Rhodes white women had been the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action. It is not uncommon for white women to present themselves as equally oppressed as black people. I have been subject to the most extraordinarily patronising engagement by white women in the name of feminism. Like many other black women I am deeply aggrieved at the way in which the white feminism that has flourished here so often casts the black man as the epitome of all evil. Along with many other black women in this space I am here, in large part, because of the unflinching support of my black father. It is a striking feature of Rhodes that African South African men are rarely appointed to academic jobs. As Gayatri Spivak has shown the demonization of black men is a longstanding feature of how colonial power operates.
“At Rhodes white women had been the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action”
There is constant discussion about ‘transformation’ at Rhodes but it never seems to go anywhere. Like many black academics I have concluded that these endless discussions, often themselves under white control, have simply not been effective in confronting racism.
The discussion about ‘transformation’ is inevitably presented in technocratic terms when the question of deracialisation and decolonisation is, clearly, a political question. Moreover the discussion is framed in a way that casts the black student and the black academic, whether absent or present, as the problem. Even on the occasions when the endemic racism of the institution is identified as a central problem it is not confronted.
The challenges that have to be taken on by anyone working while black at Rhodes exceed the constant exhaustion from everyday encounters with racism. One also finds that one’s intellectual energies have to be directed at the problems of the colony in a society in which the problems of the postcolony are becoming more acute with every passing day. For both blacks and white progressives working here the need to fight yesterday’s battles makes it very difficult to effectively engage the deepening crisis of the rest of the country, let alone to situate oneself fully within the debates across the global South. It feels like we are stuck in the 1960s, in the moment before Steve Biko and Richard Turner, and the movements that coalesced around them, started to challenge the racism of the liberal universities.
“An astonishing lack of basic awareness about what racism is”
Although Rhodes has been lucky enough to have two progressive black Vice-Chancellors the academic staff at the university is so overwhelmingly white that a lot of power has remained in white hands. The conversation about ‘transformation’ – which seldom deals with the fact that what we actually need to confront is deracialisation and decolonisation – has been often itself been monopolised by white staff. In some instances, even within the conversation about ‘transformation’, there is an astonishing lack of basic awareness about what racism is. On more than one occasion white staff have expressed sentiments that are immediately recognised by black staff and students as being rooted in a set of unexamined colonial assumptions.
The gifts of brilliant black students are often just not recognised by their teachers. Black students are often expected to conform to narrow colonial stereotypes in their work. There are whole departments in which our most talented black students report that they just do not feel comfortable.
“White mediocrity is seldom challenged here”
White mediocrity is seldom challenged here. Yet blacks have to attain unquestionable excellence in order to demonstrate that they deserve their place in the academy.
Progressive whites report that crude racism is not infrequently expressed in conversations between whites. The sort of liberal paternalism, and maternalism, that assumes that inducting black people into the university requires that they be inducted into the grammar of whiteness flourishes.
Working at Rhodes while black often leaves me anxious and frequently makes me very angry. In many respects it has been a mutilating experience. One has to harden oneself to survive here and I worry that this experience is going to break something in me and turn me into the sort of person that I don’t want to be. Already my intellectual energies are withdrawing from my original academic interests and are increasingly focussed on the need to confront racism. This is one of the costs of the imperatives of survival.
Until the students took a stand there had been no serious challenge to the normalisation of white power and authority, and to a set of pernicious assumptions that have their roots in colonialism, at this university. We owe this generation of students, many of whom are exceptionally gifted, a debt of gratitude for opening up the space in which honest discussion and effective action may finally become possible. It’s been a long time coming but finally truth is being told to power.
Dr Vashna Jagarnath is the Deputy Dean of Humanities (Research) at Rhodes University.
by Staff Reporter | Mar 13, 2015 | Opinion
Phesheya Duma. Photo: Nqobile Dludla
Chairperson of the Law Student Council (LSC), Phesheya Duma, is currently in his fourth year of study. He, along with the rest of the 2014/2015 LSC, are managing this year’s council campaigning and elections. He spoke to Wits Vuvuzela about the challenges of his position and advised students on what they should be looking out for in the new leadership.
What does the chairperson do?
I represent the council. I take everything that the council says and I articulate it. I don’t have a personal opinion, just like the council has no opinion. They take what the students say and we put it in office, and I put it to management. I take what management says and I bring it back.
What are the three biggest challenges you face as chairperson of the LSC?
The first is managing expectations. The second is persuading, and the third is giving bad news. When students ask, for example, about supplementary exam issues, we try and we try and we try, and we exhaust all channels. It’s always difficult to go back to the students and say, ‘listen, we tried’. They don’t see the steps that we took, and they always think that it’s not good enough.
What should students be listening out for during LSC elections?
Students should be listening out for the substance, for example, continuous assessments. A lot of the time in the law school, we have subjects with 50% weighting for a test and 50% weighting for an exam, that’s a problem. We’ve addressed some of these issues with admin law and contract law, and we now have continuous multiple choice questions throughout the year. Those are the things that are important, because those put a lot of pressure on you when you’re writing an exam. If you fail the first exam, you only have one other chance. In other schools, you have continuous assessments, we don’t have that here.
How have you managed the transition from having an undergraduate LLB, to only having it offered at a postgraduate level?
We were actually quite involved in the planning. Law firms and the school itself feels that when you come out of high school, you are not fully equipped or well-equipped to actually deal with the content of the legal degree. So what they now want you to do, is something else first and then do the LLB.
by Staff Reporter | Mar 10, 2015 | Lifestyle
SKY HIGH: Keegan Smith showing off his best flair bartending skills at the Liquid Chefs in Rosebank last night. Photo: Valerie Robinson
by Valerie Robinson.
A flair bartending competition saw some of the best bartenders in the country competing to raise funds in Rosebank last night.
The best of South African bartenders showed off their skills at flairing competition in Rosebank last night.
Flairing is the art of performing for the audience while drinks are mixed. The participants made use of accessories such as liquor bottles and shakers, as they juggled and tossed their props in a bid to impress the audience.
The competition, hosted by Liquid Chefs, was a fund-raising initiative for fellow bartender Martin Strobes who is battling cancer and managed to raise a total of R19 360 on the night.
The 16 participants represented both old school flair and new school talent. There were eight rounds which saw a more experienced bartender flairing against a new school counterpart.
After each round of flairing there was also a speed round. The competitors had one minute to make a cocktail that was auctioned off with the highest bid peaking at R1600.
At the end of the night the competition deadlocked resulting in a tie breaker round. Victor Pires, considered as one of the best flair bartenders in the country, emerged victorious.
