My fourth year of living on campus has allowed me not only to acknowledge and appreciate the privilege I have, but to encourage others to give it a try.
Applications to study at Wits are open and will be closing at the end of September. One of the decisions applicants have to make is where they will live while studying in Braamfontein or Parktown.
While there are factors that are influential for staying off campus, there are factors that are influential for staying on campus, too.
A 2020 academic paper reveals many students prefer to stay off campus because they get to become independent, unrestricted by the rules that come with staying on campus, and get a chance to grow.
My experience as a resident at West Campus Village – a postgraduate accommodation at Wits – would imply otherwise because living on campus has made my studies and social life easier. Bearing in mind that according to a 2022 Wits report, while the university has approximately 40 000 students, only 2 000 can be accommodated on campus. So, I am not tone-deaf to the student accommodation crisis.
I have been living on campus since my first year in 2020 when I lived at Barnato Hall on West Campus for the duration of my undergraduate degree. In my fourth year staying on campus, I have witnessed the introduction of three private off-campus student accommodations. Every year, their advertisements tend to lure in students with basic amenities such as: 24/7 Wi-Fi, increased laundry tokens, 24/7 security and how close they are to main campus.
Unlike staying off-campus, on campus residences minimise the worry of travelling to class. You get to do your laundry an unlimited number of times and I have found myself coming back from studying during hours that would compromise my safety had I been living off campus.
During orientation week of my first year, I got a guided opportunity to familiarise myself with the campus space. It was in the tours of libraries, computer labs and study labs that I got to see the lengths Wits goes to make sure we all have an equal opportunity to participate in our academics. For example, campus is never without electricity, students with no laptops have access to computers and the commerce, law and management library is open 24/7 together with access to its printers.
I had only been living at Barnato Hall for a few weeks when loadshedding hit for the first time. To my surprise, the Wi-Fi remained on. As I was still wondering what I would be doing in the absence of electricity, it came back on in less than five minutes as the university’s generators kicked in.
Coming from the township of Mabopane in Pretoria, this was all very new to me because we experience unscheduled power cuts on top of the loadshedding. Those living off campus are not as fortunate as they remain in darkness during such episodes. This has become worse this year after Eskom announced in February an indefinite implementation of Stage 6 loadshedding, signalling no end to the national energy crisis.
I have not enjoyed everything about living in a university residence, such as when we had to wear our yellow freshmen t-shirts and welcome everyone with the residence’s war cry. However, I am grateful to have met and made so many friends during those team-building events in first year. Some remain my friends to this day.
My experience has been vindicated by another academic study, published in 2021, which found that living on campus comes with a greater opportunity to feel like you belong, a more welcoming perception of how campus is and a greater ability to cope with studies as compared to living off campus.
In a time where coalitions are the new reality for South Africa, will young leaders have the upper hand in next year’s national elections?
If the rollercoaster coalitions at municipal level over the past couple of years are a trailer for 2024’s national scramble, then we are in for a crazy ride with new key players emerging.
The 2024 national election is going to be an interesting one in South African politics – especially for the country’s youth. With an unemployment rate of 63,9% for those aged 15 to 24, and 42,1% for those between ages 25 and 34, things are not looking great for the youth – with some becoming fed up with the status quo.
For the first time in our 29-year democracy, the ruling ANC is largely predicted to receive less than 50% of the vote – however, these statistics fluctuate from poll to poll. This has already been the case across various large metropolitan councils, including Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekhuruleni, which has seen the frequent formation and breaking up of coalitions, resulting in unstable government.
We are likely to see this play out at a national level in 2024. Some parties, such as the Democratic Alliance and ActionSA, are already scrambling to form coalition pacts regardless of the outcome of the polls that are still 12 months away.
The question this raises is: what will the youth’s role be in coalition politics next year? Of 43 million eligible voters, 18 million are youth, however, only 10 million or so are registered to vote. As history has shown, the turnout rate may be much lower. In addition statistics show that the lower the voter turnout, the higher the percentage of votes will be for the ANC.
This article is not arguing the importance of the youth going out to vote. (Award-winning legal and development practitioner Karabo Mokgonyana did that very well in a Mail & Guardian article.) Instead, it considers a scenario in which the youth turned out in numbers to vote, and the ANC fell below the 50% threshold to form a government.
Witsies cast their votes in the 2016 local government elections at the East Campus Old Mutual Sports Hall voting station. Photo: File
Would young voters vote for a youth-based agenda, and if so, who would be calling the shots in coalitions? The question is relevant as there has been a flurry of new youth-oriented political movements and parties, while existing parties with young leaders in positions of power such as the EFF are maintaining their relatively large youth support base.
On the other hand, parties such as the DA, are not only losing support in elections, but are losing prominent young leaders such as Phumzile van Damme, Mbali Ntuli, Mmusi Maimane and Bongani Baloyi. The reasons for their departures are varied and complex, but they have also pointed to the disproportionate representation of youth in decision-making structures, which has allowed those in positions of power not only to disregard their needs but to underestimate the will of the youth to do something about it.
In terms of representation in addressing this, of the 446 members of parliament, only 51 (11%) are under the age of 35.
In an interview with Wits Vuvuzela, former DA and ActionSA leader, and now founder and president of Xiluva, Bongani Baloyi,said that he believed that young people would vote for those pushing for a “youth-oriented agenda”. This agenda focuses on prioritising pressing issues affecting the youth, such as unemployment.
“Young people deliver better governance,” said Baloyi who, in 2013 at the age of 26, was voted as mayor of Midvaal municipality, a position he held until November 2021. His tenure was well known for clean governance.
With a large fragmentation of political parties in the country – 696 are registered nationally and 1634 locally – youth-oriented parties can pull support away from established parties with unrelatable leaders for young South Africans and play a crucial role in coalition politics.
With some parties already ruling out the possibility of talks with the ANC and EFF, youth-led parties such as Xiluva, Maimane’s Build One South Africa and Rise Mzansi which was launched by former journalist Songezo Zibi on April 19, can gain the upper hand in coalition talks, and to push “youth-based agendas”.
Why is the proposed polyandry law government’s attempt at ‘equalising society’ and creating a unified and diverse nation, when we have so many other issues that must be addressed first?
Advertising has come a long way since jingles about cereal and housewives wrestling with Verimark vacuum cleaners. The standard, cookie-cutter formula of selling brands, perception or products with the ubiquity of white picket fences and nuclear families with pearly-toothed smiles gushing over washing powder just doesn’t quite cut it.
With limited airtime and competition over space, advertising doesn’t manipulate the unattainable anymore, it weaponises black rage to cause a stir.
Take the now infamous 2017 Dove advert: the Unilever giant distributed an advert of a black woman seemingly transformed as her cleaner, whiter self after using a Dove body-wash.
The racist undertones of the advert became a source of outrage and debate on social media. The recycled PR apology from the brand made its rounds and Dove still remains as prevalent as ever with the backlash barely making a dent in sales.
Another beauty brand, Nivea, was found guilty of the same pattern of symbolising whiteness as the aspiration through their Natural Fairness lotion advert in 2017.
In 2018, H&M made the only black child in their catalogue wear a ‘coolest monkey in the jungle’ sweater, alluding to the racist tropes of othering black people as wild animals.
Gucci’s recent 2019 advert featuring a white woman wearing a Jim Crow-type black jumper with exaggerated red lips seen in the blackface minstrel performances of the 1950s also utilised black outrage to stay relevant.
Gucci and Moncler did blackface. Burberry thinks a noose around the neck is fashionable. I’m starting to believe the fashion industry has an agenda this Black History Month pic.twitter.com/CSVuNhlpVe
Each of these brands have released content perpetuating colourism, racism and a strong undercurrent of anti-blackness in a social climate that makes it difficult to believe the intention was anything but deliberate.
Brands feed on the black response to racist representations and with each validly outraged Tweet comes an increase in their chances of staying in the 24-hour news cycle without bearing the brunt of any real lasting ramifications.
Technology enables us to have conversations across borders instead of a one-dimensional, one-stream flow of information with zero participation at the end. Decades ago, adverts were simply funnelled down your throat with little to no input, critique or comment on how they were received other than if the product sold or not.
Decades ago, people of colour were subjected to racist misrepresentation in the media, depicted as voiceless, identity-less tropes without much say in how we wanted to see ourselves.
Now, we have platforms to shut down the careless narratives people who don’t look like us construct but that we need to realise that the freedom of expression has become a weapon in the arsenal of conglomerates.
Retweets, shares and likes are the currency of the digitised world. If your ideas aren’t going viral, they’re lost in a virtual sea of over-saturated content. Advertisers know this better than most.
The pattern in modern age advertising is to bet on riding the clout of trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons.
As the old adage goes, “bad publicity is still publicity” and advertising seems to manipulate valid outrage at being marginalised as a way to stay in the limelight.
The problem with exploiting black rage for profit is that, even after centuries of colonialism and oppression, our rage isn’t an infinite resource. Monetising black rage is essentially free advertising but what it costs to the psyche of black people is a lot more.
There are tangible consequences to this: black rage has been a tool for our survival in a world that expects silence or submission from the historically and perpetually oppressed. Exhausting black rage by having to constantly fight for your humanity every time H&M wants their name in headlines is causing distraction and fatigue from what we should be really focused on.
Black rage is critically important, it is valid and it is the very thing that ensured the liberation of this country and the emancipated black identity from the constraints and skewed narratives of white hegemony.
The burden shouldn’t be on the marginalised to have to expend our rage to make neoliberal corporations recognise our humanity apart from what we spend or don’t spend. Black people don’t have to expend emotional labour doing free sensitivity training for brands that should know better.
Maybe originality is dead (and there is absolutely nothing about original about racism), but it’s time for a new stage of advertising where humanity is worth a bit more than a click-through rate.
FEATURED IMAGE: Busang Senne, student journalist at Wits Vuvuzela. Photo: File.
Before the 2018/2019 Student Representative Council nominations close on September 20, here’s some advice from a person who has experienced the office first hand.
Since her announcement as the Democratic Alliance’s mayoral candidate for Johannesburg, Helen Zille has dominated national headlines. In this bonus episode of We Should Be Writing podcast, hosts Lulah Mapiye and Bonolo Mokonoto dissect a media meet-and-greet with the mayoral hopeful. From her extensive political résumé to her controversial public utterance, we examine why the Democratic Alliance has chosen Hellen Zille as their candidate for the 2027 local mayoral elections. Additionally, […]
