tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/june-16-28317/articlesJune 16 – The Conversation2021-12-26T07:13:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/976192021-12-26T07:13:40Z2021-12-26T07:13:40ZArchbishop Desmond Tutu: father of South Africa’s ‘rainbow nation’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304935/original/file-20191203-67028-uqkr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Archbishop Desmond Tutu</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Epa/Ian Langsdon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu has <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2021/12/26/breaking-news-archbishop-desmond-tutu-passes-away">died</a> at the age of 90. </p>
<p>Archbishop Tutu earned the respect and love of millions of South Africans and the world. He carved out a permanent place in their hearts and minds, becoming known affectionately as “The Arch”. </p>
<p>When South Africans woke up on the morning of 7 April, 2017 to protest against then President Jacob Zuma’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/world/africa/south-africa-pravin-gordhan-jacob-zuma.html">removal </a> of the respected Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/archbishop-emeritus-desmond-mpilo-tutu">Archbishop Tutu</a> left his Hermanus retirement home to join the protests. He was 86 years old at the time, and his health was frail. But protest was in his blood. In his view, no government was legitimate unless it represented all its people well.</p>
<p>There was still that sharpness in his words when <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/04/07/tutu-makes-rare-appearance-to-support-anti-zuma-march">he said that</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>We will pray for the downfall of a government that misrepresents us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These words echoed his stance of ethical and moral integrity as well as human dignity. It is on these principles that he had fought valiantly against the system of apartheid and became, as the Desmond Tutu Foundation rightly <a href="http://www.tutufoundationusa.org/mission-vision/">affirms</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>an outspoken defender of human rights and campaigner for the oppressed. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/archbishop-emeritus-desmond-mpilo-tutu">Archbishop Tutu</a> didn’t stop his fight for human rights once apartheid came to a formal end in 1994. He continued to speak critically against politicians who abused their power. He also added his weight to various causes, including HIV/AIDS, poverty, racism, homophobia and transphobia. </p>
<p>His fight for human rights wasn’t limited to South Africa. Through his <a href="http://www.tutufoundationusa.org/mission-vision/">peace foundation</a>, which he formed in 2015, he extended his vision for a peaceful world “in which everyone values human dignity and our interconnectedness”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301976/original/file-20191115-66937-1e6zrq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301976/original/file-20191115-66937-1e6zrq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301976/original/file-20191115-66937-1e6zrq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301976/original/file-20191115-66937-1e6zrq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301976/original/file-20191115-66937-1e6zrq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301976/original/file-20191115-66937-1e6zrq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301976/original/file-20191115-66937-1e6zrq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Archbishop Tutu with the Dalai Lama at the Tibetan Children’s Village school in Dharamsala, in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Sanjay Baid</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He also became relentless in his support for the Dalai Lama, whom he considered his best friend. He condemned the South African government for refusing the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader a visa to deliver the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/archbishop-emeritus-mpilo-desmond-tutu">“Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture”</a> <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/8807080/Tutu-South-African-government-is-worse-than-apartheid-after-Dalai-Lama-visa-row.html">in 2011</a>. </p>
<h2>Early years</h2>
<p>Archbishop Tutu came from humble beginnings. Born on 7 October, 1931 in Klerksdorp, in the North West Province of South Africa where his father, Zachariah was a headmaster of a high school. His mother, Aletha Matlare, was a domestic worker.</p>
<p>One of the most influential figures in his early years was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/father-trevor-huddleston">Father Trevor Huddleston</a>, a fierce campaigner against apartheid. Their friendship led to the young Tutu being introduced into the Anglican Church. </p>
<p>After completing his education he had a brief stint teaching English and History at Madibane High School in Soweto; and then at Krugersdorp High School , west of Johannesburg; where his father was a headmaster. It was here that he met his future wife, Nomalizo Leah Shenxane. </p>
<p>It is interesting that he agreed to a Roman Catholic wedding ceremony, although he was Anglican. This ecumenical act at the very early stage in his life gives us a hint of his commitment to ecumenical work in later years. </p>
<p>He quit teaching in the wake of the introduction of the inferior <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/bantu-education-and-racist-compartmentalizing-education">“Bantu education”</a> for black people in 1953. Under the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/bantu-education-act-act-no-47-1953">Bantu Education Act, 1953</a>, the education of the native African population was limited to producing an unskilled work force. </p>
<p>In 1955 Tutu entered the service of the church as a sub-deacon. He got married the same year. He enrolled for theological education in 1958 and, after completing his studies, was ordained as a deacon of Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg in 1960, and became its first black dean in 1975. </p>
<p>In 1962 he went to London to pursue further theological education with funding from the World Council of Churches. He earned a Master of Theology degree, and after serving in various parishes in London, returned to South Africa in 1966 <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/archbishop-emeritus-mpilo-desmond-tutu">to teach</a> at the Federal Theological Seminary at Alice, Eastern Cape. </p>
<p>One of the lesser known facts is that he had special interest in the study of Islam. He had wanted to pursue this in his doctoral studies, but this was not to be. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301983/original/file-20191115-66957-7p8h3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301983/original/file-20191115-66957-7p8h3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301983/original/file-20191115-66957-7p8h3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301983/original/file-20191115-66957-7p8h3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301983/original/file-20191115-66957-7p8h3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301983/original/file-20191115-66957-7p8h3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301983/original/file-20191115-66957-7p8h3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and his wife Tutu at the Youth Health Festival in Cape Town in 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The activities he was involved in in the early 1970s were to lay the foundation for his political struggle against apartheid. These included teaching in Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland and, thereafter, a posting to London as the <a href="https://www.tutu.org.za/founders-journey/">Associate Director for Africa</a> at the Theological Education Fund, and his exposure to <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222016000100033">Black Theology</a>. He also visited many African countries in the early 1970s. </p>
<p>He eventually returned to Johannesburg as the dean of Johannesburg and the rector of St. Mary’s Anglican Parish in 1976. </p>
<h2>Political activism</h2>
<p>It was at St Mary’s that Tutu first confronted the then apartheid Prime Minister John Vorster, writing him <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/letter-desmond-tutu-p-w-botha-letter-pretoria">a letter</a> in 1976 decrying the deplorable state in which black people had to live. </p>
<p>On 16 June <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Soweto went up in flames</a>, when black high school pupils protested against the forced use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, and were mowed down by apartheid police.</p>
<p>Bishop Tutu was thrust deeper and deeper into the struggle. He delivered one of his most passionate and fiery orations <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/bikos-imprisonment-death-and-aftermath">following the death in detention</a> of the black consciousness leader, Steve Biko in 1977.</p>
<p>His role as the <a href="http://sacc.org.za/history/">General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches</a>, and later as the rector of St. Augustine’s Church in Orlando West in Soweto, saw him become an ardent critic of the most egregious aspects of apartheid. This included the forced removals of black people from urban areas deemed to be white areas. </p>
<h2>A target</h2>
<p>With his growing political activism in the 1980s, the Arch became a target of the apartheid government’s full scale victimisation and faced death threats as well as bomb scares. In March 1980 <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/04/16/South-Africa-revokes-bishops-passport/8490356245200/">his passport was revoked</a>. After much international outcry and intervention, he was given a “limited travel document” two years later to travel overseas.</p>
<p>His work was recognised globally, and he was awarded <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1984/summary/">Nobel Prize for Peace</a> in 1984 for being a unifying leader in the campaign to resolve the problem of apartheid in South Africa. </p>
<p>He went on to receive more distinguished awards. He became the Bishop of Johannesburg in 1984, and the Archbishop of Cape Town <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/archbishop-emeritus-mpilo-desmond-tutu">in 1986</a>. In the following four years leading up to the release of Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison, the Arch had his work cut out for him. This involved campaigning for international pressure to be brought on the apartheid through sanctions.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301974/original/file-20191115-66932-1kefr5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301974/original/file-20191115-66932-1kefr5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301974/original/file-20191115-66932-1kefr5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301974/original/file-20191115-66932-1kefr5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301974/original/file-20191115-66932-1kefr5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301974/original/file-20191115-66932-1kefr5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301974/original/file-20191115-66932-1kefr5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Archbishop Tutu received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US President Obama in 2009.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Shawn Thew</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Democracy years</h2>
<p>After 1994, he headed the <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a>. Its primary goal was to afford those who committed human rights abuses – for or against apartheid – the opportunity to come clean, offer legal amnesty to deserving ones, and to enable the perpetrators to make amends to their victims. </p>
<p>Two greatest moments in his personal life took his theological outlook beyond the confines of the Church. One was when his daughter Mpho declared she was gay and the church refused her same sex marriage. The Arch <a href="http://www.capetownmagazine.com/whats-the-deal-with/desmond-tutu/125_22_17533">proclaimed</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn’t worship that God. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The second was when he declared his <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/07/archbishop-desmond-tutu-asks-for-the-right-to-an-assisted-death/">preference for assisted death</a>.</p>
<p>South Africa is blessed to have had such a brave and courageous man as The Arch, who truly symbolised the idea of the country as a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-10734471">“rainbow nation” </a>. South Africa will feel the loss of the moral direction of this brave soldier of God for generations to come. <em>Hamba kahle</em> (go well) Arch.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>P. Pratap Kumar receives funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa. </span></em></p>Archbishop Desmond Tutu didn’t stop his fight for human rights once apartheid came to a formal end in 1994. He continued to speak critically against politicians who abused their power.P. Pratap Kumar, Emeritus Professor, School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics, University of KwaZulu-NatalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1252382019-10-18T12:44:47Z2019-10-18T12:44:47ZBlack Consciousness in South Africa demands a much wider historical lens<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297669/original/file-20191018-56224-194znt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Steve Biko is widely considered to be the father of Black Consciousness in South Africa. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Sowetan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year marks the 44th anniversary of <a href="http://www.apartheidmuseum.org/sites/default/files/files/BIKO%203b.pdf">Black Wednesday</a>, when the apartheid regime banned 18 civic organisations in a targeted attack on media freedom and civil society. Many of these organisations were aligned to the <a href="http://azapo.org.za/about-azapo/black-consciousness/">Black Consciousness Movement</a>. The high number of organisations outlawed by the nationalist government speaks to the breadth of impact Black Consciousness had on South Africa. </p>
<p>South Africans often think with simplistic historical narratives. For example, the historical role of Black Consciousness (or BC) is primarily seen in its renewed challenge to the apartheid state in inspiring the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Soweto Uprising of 16 June 1976</a>. A fuller appreciation of its history and impact transcends this narrower focus.</p>
<p>The craft of historians has been summed up in the so-called <a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/january-2007/what-does-it-mean-to-think-historically">five Cs of historical thinking</a>: context, complexity, contingency, causality and change over time. Historians apply these principles to study the past as accurately as possible. This is also known as the principle of <a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Historicism">historicism</a>. </p>
<p>Using these principles I have studied South African civil society in the late 1960s and 1970s. While this time was seen as a lull in the opposition to apartheid, closer examination emphasises the importance of ideas, debates and movements in the period.</p>
<p>My <a href="http://ukznpress.bookslive.co.za/blog/2018/05/03/black-consciousness-and-progressive-movements-under-apartheid-presents-an-intellectual-history-of-black-consciousness-in-sa-in-the-comparative-perspective-that-biko-originally-called-for/">book</a>, “Black Consciousness and Progressive Movements under Apartheid”, shows how activists drew on global movements of social change in their responses to the oppression of apartheid which they debated, often heatedly. To understand Black Consciousness historically, and its wider impacts, we need to understand this broader context. Black Consciousness changed blacks and whites. </p>
<h2>Origins of Black Consciousness</h2>
<p>Firstly, Black Consciousness emerged together with a growing global Christian challenge to apartheid. The World Council of Churches set an early benchmark at the <a href="http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.ydlwcc2079_final.pdf">Cottesloe Consultation</a> (7-14 December 1960) in response to the Sharpeville Massacre of 21 March 1960. At the Consultation the South African churches, including Afrikaans churches, effectively rejected apartheid. </p>
<p>The final statement <a href="http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.ydlwcc2079_final.pdf">read</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>all racial groups who permanently inhabit our country … have an equal right to make their contribution towards the enrichment of the life of their country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The <a href="https://www.oikoumene.org/en/about-us">World Council of Churches</a> became even further radicalised. By 1970 it authorised the first of a series of <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0018-229X2017000200005&lng=en&nrm=iso">financial grants</a> to the banned African National Congress and other liberation movements. The influence of this Christian challenge to apartheid would be felt in many ways, not least in their financial support.</p>
<p>Secondly, my book helps to place Black Consciousness in the wave of protests that spread throughout the world in 1968. <a href="https://uct1968sitin.wordpress.com/">The sit-in</a> by white students that took place at the University of Cape Town is normally given pride of place. But the protest by black students at the University of Fort Hare in 1968 led to a wider mobilisation across South African universities.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>During their sit-in Fort Hare students sang the anthems <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/4631?lang=en">“Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika”</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/216482943/the-inspiring-force-of-we-shall-overcome">“We Shall Overcome”</a>. Their choice showed how their desire for national liberation and the influence of the Global Sixties merged. I also show how the radicals within the mainly white National Union of South African Students (Nusas) were quick to recognise the legitimacy of the challenge of Black Consciousness and pushed for a change in Nusas accordingly.</p>
<p>Thirdly, I locate Black Consciousness in the rebirth of the labour movement. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-student-organisation-saso">The South African Students’ Organisation</a> had their headquarters in Durban in the early 1970s. This placed Black Consciousness activists in close proximity to people like the philosopher <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/richard-albert-turner">Richard Turner</a> at the University of Natal and his circle of New Left activists. </p>
<p>My <a href="http://ukznpress.bookslive.co.za/blog/2018/05/03/black-consciousness-and-progressive-movements-under-apartheid-presents-an-intellectual-history-of-black-consciousness-in-sa-in-the-comparative-perspective-that-biko-originally-called-for/">book</a> points to the limits of the binary that Biko and Turner have often been cast in. </p>
<p>I argue for their common understanding of economic exploitation as the basis of apartheid. They agreed on the need for drastic structural change to address South African society’s social ills but they disagreed on how to achieve this. Pointing to Biko’s thinking on the economic rationale of apartheid unsettles the pigeonhole that he is often placed in as a theoretician of race.</p>
<p>Fourthly, my book acknowledges the tension between Black Consciousness and feminism. I show how female activists within the Black Consciousness Movement appropriated the liberation that their male comrades laid claim to. They also distanced themselves from the white feminist movement.</p>
<p>Lastly, my book evokes the metaphor of “shock waves”. I use the term to describe the impact of Black Consciousness on organisations like Nusas as well as the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03064228308533602?journalCode=rioc20">Christian Institute</a>. The Christian Institute was an ecumenical organisation that had been established by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/reverend-beyers-naude">Reverend Beyers Naudé</a> and a small group of Dutch Reformed clergy in August 1963.</p>
<p>Naudé’s contacts with Biko and the Black Consciousness activists in 1971, together with the conclusions they drew from the <a href="https://www.aluka.org/struggles/collection/SPROCAS">Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society</a> (Sprocas), helped change the orientation of the organisation. The first sign of this change was when the second stage of Sprocas, began funding the <a href="https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/Br1973.0376.4354.000.000.1974.18.pdf">Black Community Programmes</a>, an independent, black-run community development organisation.</p>
<p>It also established a White Consciousness Programme that acknowledged and tried to address the problem of white racism in white society. These were organisational expressions of the success of the arguments of Black consciousness. </p>
<h2>Recovering histories</h2>
<p>It is vital to study the past as “an inventory of alternatives” as the British historian, John Tosh, <a href="https://www.academia.edu/22557305/John_Tosh_-_The_Pursuit_of_History">has encouraged</a>. Although the optimism of the post-apartheid <a href="http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/3761/thesis_tshawane_n.pdf">rainbow nation</a> has long since evaporated, South Africa has important and often forgotten histories that must be recovered. The frustrations that are manipulated by populists in the country, and across the world, need to be channelled correctly. South Africans need to remember the organisational and ideological efforts of their country’s noblest daughters and sons and strive to follow in their footsteps.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125238/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Macqueen received funding from the National Research Foundation and the University of Pretoria. </span></em></p>Black consciousness in South Africa changed blacks and whites.Ian Macqueen, Lecturer, Department of Historical and Heritage Studies, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1248132019-10-18T10:01:31Z2019-10-18T10:01:31ZOnkgopotse Tiro: revolutionary who paid a heavy price for shaking apartheid to its core<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297643/original/file-20191018-56215-1hgbigw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Onkgopotse Tiro</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Book cover</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The book, <a href="https://www.takealot.com/parcel-of-death/PLID55073335">“Parcel of Death”</a>, is a journey to a revolutionary past. It is a journey but not a return to the past. Former journalist <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.co.za/blogs/news/writing-the-little-told-story-of-onkgopotse-tiro">Gaongalelwe Tiro</a> has written a book about his uncle Onkgopotse Tiro – a revolutionary spirit who powered the student <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">uprisings of June 1976</a> in Soweto, Guguletu – Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Umlazi – Durban, Bloemfontein and Pietermaritzburg. </p>
<p>It is the same spirit that was to galvanise another generation decades later in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/feesmustfall-the-poster-child-for-new-forms-of-struggle-in-south-africa-68773">fees must fall</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/it-will-take-critical-thorough-scrutiny-to-truly-decolonise-knowledge-78477">decolonisation </a> movements at the turn of the century.</p>
<p>Tiro was a student leader at the University of the North, now <a href="https://www.ul.ac.za/index.php?Entity=Home">University of Limpopo</a>, in the early 1970s and one of the early exponents of the revolutionary Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa. He fled to exile in Botswana, where he was killed by a parcel bomb in 1974. It has always been suspected that it was sent by the apartheid security forces.</p>
<p>The book begins with a chapter entitled: “Blown to Smithereens”. The power and emotion contained in this chapter is enough to stop you from continuing. Even though I know the events that are described in the chapter and, had my own emotion and response on the morning of the day in February 1974 when the news of Tiro’s assassination came through, I still read the chapter over and over and hesitated to face up to subsequent chapters.</p>
<h2>Onkgopotse Tiro</h2>
<p>Onkgopotse Tiro was born in Dinokana Village outside the small town of Zeerust, in what is now known as the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/north-west">North West Province</a>, South Africa. These origins automatically define him as son of poor parents.</p>
<p>Like other African young men and women, Tiro somehow managed to make it to university. For him, being of a particular tribal origin, it could only be University of the North, also known as Turfloop, a blacks-only university for students designated for the Tswana, Sotho, Pedi, Venda and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/tswana">Shangaan tribes</a>, located east of Polokwane. This, in line with the Apartheid racist segregation policies of the white minority state of the time.</p>
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<p>The family and social background and experiences that Onkgopotse brought to the university immediately came into conflict with the colonial and racial texture inscribed in every facet of the university life. The critical, questioning mind of the soon to be born philosophy of <a href="http://azapo.org.za/about-azapo/black-consciousness/">Black Consciousness</a> soon showed its real character when Tiro and other black students immersed themselves in debates about how they should organise themselves around their own reality, black reality.</p>
<p>Political existentialism was the core mark of the strategy of black resistance by university students in those early days of black consciousness. Tiro was a key leader in this regard and, this is how this revolutionary edge catapulted him to the helm of student political organisation.</p>
<p>The anger of the white racist administrators and staff at the university and on behalf of all other white racists was provoked beyond measure when Tiro <a href="http://azapo.org.za/graduation-speech-by-onkgopotse-tiro-at-the-university-of-the-north-29-april-1972/">delivered a graduation speech</a> in 1972, that ignited black student political uprising throughout the land.</p>
<p>Thus in the first chapter the author details the events preceding, surrounding and, following the assassination of Tiro. The book depicts how Tiro’s time at Turfloop amounted to a revolutionising political script for generations to come. It is particularly helpful to have this history of the Black Consciousness Movement which provides background to the later assassination of <a href="http://azapo.org.za/azapohistory/bantu-stephen-biko/">Steve Biko</a>, who similarly died brutally at the hands of agents of a white racist regime.</p>
<p>The message is simple: White supremacists murdered Onkgopotse Tiro. They also murdered his associates, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/mthuli-ka-shezi">Mthuli Ka Shezi</a>, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/mapetla-mohapi-1947-1976">Mapetla Mohapi</a> and Steve Biko. The list is long.</p>
<p>Students of Black Consciousness need to grasp this in order to understand the movement and the people that Tiro died for. Deliberately, or not, the author’s choice of the starting point for the biography of his late uncle is inspired by the same spirit that shook the foundations of a racist settler-colonial regime.</p>
<p>The rest of the book walks back to the events that led to Tiro’s assassination. It is a biography that refuses to engage in political narcissism. Its story comes back to us from the future. We understand who Tiro was through the lens of what happened long after he was no more.</p>
<p>It is well written and does not confuscate, not even politically or ideologically. Through the chapters that follow the first one, we come to meet and know the people who gave birth to a movement and died for a country. We also come to understand how relationships change even among the closest of comrades. Readers will be served with the truth of events and intricacies that professional historians and ideologues <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-steve-bikos-remarkable-legacy-often-overlooked-82952">conceal for no good reason</a>.</p>
<p>The biographer is more than a family member. He is himself a player, activist and combatant in the theatre of struggle in which his uncle’s extinction was plotted and carried out. He navigates the terrain professionally and does so like a revolutionary.</p>
<p>The writer shares the initial circumstances that surrounded the moment of political ignition that led to expulsion of Tiro from the University of the North and set the country on fire. This discussion happens, rightfully, later in the book. It helps to remove the temptation to write the story chronologically. As we have said, the story of Onkgopotse Tiro comes to us from the future. For indeed, in his life story, to borrow from <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/18th-Brumaire.pdf">Karl Marx’s unforgettable words,</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>the phrase does not go beyond the content; the content goes beyond the phrase.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is a story that draws its “poetry from the future”.</p>
<p>The book, therefore, shares snippets of the famous graduation speech that led to Tiro’s expulsion from Turfloop and subsequently galvanized black students in all the black campuses to solidarity action. </p>
<p>The rest is history.</p>
<p>The real pity, though, is that the biographer deprived the readers of Tiro’s speech in its totality. It is not enough to have quoted parts of it. It is a classic by itself and in its own right.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124813/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Itumeleng Mosala has received funding from universities for his research. He is a patron of the June 16, 1976 Foundation and the owner of Still Nascent Ventures (Pty) Ltd. He is a member of the Azanian People's Organisation and the party's past president. </span></em></p>The book depicts how Onkgopotse Tiro’s time at Turfloop amounted to a revolutionising political script for generations to come.Itumeleng Mosala, Research Associate professor, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1188462019-06-14T12:16:52Z2019-06-14T12:16:52ZA tribute to Raymond Louw: a great South African editor and determined activist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279499/original/file-20190614-158953-1bhnb4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Raymond Louw, right, with then deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, middle, and veteran journalist Mathatha Tsedu in 2015.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GovernmentZA/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Veteran South African journalist Raymond Louw has <a href="https://www.enca.com/news/veteran-journalist-raymond-louw-dies">passed away</a> at the age of 93. He was a former editor of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/editorial-the-rand-daily-mail">Rand Daily Mail</a> newspaper and tireless press freedom campaigner and mentor. Anton Harber delivered the eulogy at his funeral. This is an edited version.</em></p>
<p>There are dictators and autocrats who are breathing a little easier today. The intolerant, the narrow-minded, the scared, the defensive, the haters of freedom and particularly freedom of speech, are watching us lay to rest the man who never left them alone. </p>
<p>Like a mosquito on a hot summer’s night, Raymond Louw buzzed around the heads of those who challenged our right to speak our minds. They cursed him and tried to swat him away, but he persisted, circling, watching and settling wherever he could to disturb and irritate them. Today, they hope they can rest a little easier, because Ray is gone.</p>
<p>There are lawmakers who are thinking: perhaps now we can slip a Bill through without “Oom Ray” (“Uncle Ray”, as he was known), noticing that it has implications for media freedom. There are political leaders who will be thinking, maybe now I can get in a swipe at journalists without him giving me a hard time.</p>
<p>And, if we are to be honest, there are also many of Ray’s friends and colleagues who feel that they might get a brief rest. Because the man who cajoled and prodded them, who constantly reminded them of the need to be alert and vigilant for new threats to our freedom, the man who volunteered first and then obliged you to follow him, who wrote countless petitions, memoranda and policy documents, who never slowed down, has left us.</p>
<p>Yet Ray was the one with the energy, the steely resolve and the staying power. Even at 93 years old, until the last few weeks, Ray was the most solid, consistent and reliable activist in the world of anti-censorship, putting to shame younger men like me. When we were exhausted, Ray would keep going. When we wanted to give up, Ray would not let us.</p>
<p>There are a number of parts to Ray’s legacy.</p>
<h2>Oom Ray’s legacy</h2>
<p>If we just think of him as the finest editor of one of the finest newspapers, it would be enough for a legacy. There are others who were more ostentatious and quicker to claim credit for the international reputation of the Rand Daily Mail as the newspaper which covered the brutal horrors of apartheid better than any other media of the time, an often lone liberal voice in a cacophony of reactionary hostility and white paranoia.</p>
<p>But I can tell you, as someone who has spent time going through the newspapers of that period, the paper stood out from its peers for its commitment to fine, critical and independent journalism – and that it was at its best and its strongest during Ray’s 11-year editorship. When he took over from <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-laurence-gandar-1185435.html">Laurence Gandar</a>, the man who had turned it from a right-wing rag to a powerful and important critical liberal voice, he told the board of directors he would continue with that tradition. That was Ray – he would not mislead or disguise to get the position; he was straightforward, scrupulously honest and firm in his views. And it was under Ray that the paper reached its zenith in circulation, impact, and was even in profit.</p>
<p>Ray oversaw the Rand Daily Mail’s coverage of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">June 1976 students’ uprising</a>, during which apartheid police killed unarmed schoolchildren. The paper covered those epochal events better, fuller and quicker than its rivals. Ray was first and foremost a hard news man who placed the highest value on getting the story and, above all, getting it right. Journalists who worked under him will tell you that he was a demanding task-master who set high standards, but if you got it right, he would back you to the hilt and stand between you and those who would attack you.</p>
<p>It was Ray who brought the first black reporters and photographers into the newsroom. When a white photographer objected to sharing a darkroom with the now legendary photographer <a href="http://southafrica.co.za/dr-peter-magubane.html">Peter Magubane</a>, Ray’s hands were tied by the law. So he set up a special darkroom for Peter on the roof of the building to get around the segregation laws and ensure Peter could continue working. Peter will tell you that he enjoyed the solitude of his out-of-sight darkroom, and that Ray stood by him during his lengthy spell in detention.</p>
<h2>Journalist’s journalist, editor’s editor</h2>
<p>If we think of Ray as someone who rose from the bottom ranks of newspaper to reach the pinnacle, self-made and self-taught, that would in itself be a legacy of note. Rejecting the path of engineering, he found himself a position as what was then called a copyboy, the lowliest newsroom person who ran with the copy from typewriter to typesetter. He worked his way through the newsroom, step-by-step, reporter, sub-editor, news editor, night editor, and then editor.</p>
<p>It is important to remember what a time it was. The apartheid government was at its strongest, most ruthless and most authoritarian. There were few voices within the country standing up against it, and the Rand Daily Mail’s was one of the most consistent of them. It is true that the newspaper operated within the constraints and limitations of the time, within the framework of the law, commerce and the white parliamentary politics. But it constantly pushed at these boundaries, covering black politics, <a href="http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/Bond%20Townships.pdf">township</a> life and the horrors of apartheid more than any of its competitors.</p>
<p>When Ray was retired as editor, and later as a manager, it was an early sign of the assertion of short-term commercial interests over a longer-term vision for South Africa and its journalism.</p>
<p>If we just considered the period after Ray’s editorship, when he gave his time to the cause of anti-censorship, his extensive work there would also present an admirable legacy. For around 65 years in journalism, he had our backs. He didn’t have to like you, or agree with you, and if so he would certainly let you know, but if you produced good journalism, he would defend you and your work with passion and determination. </p>
<p>He read every Bill, he scoured all the news, read every court document, he was vigilant in seeking out any hint of a threat to freedom of speech, and he would be on it: consistently and relentlessly.</p>
<h2>An editor and an activist</h2>
<p>So we will remember him as a great editor and a determined activist. But Ray was also a man of unbending principle: you never had any doubt about what he believed, what he thought and what he stood for. He was firm, consistent and solid as a rock. He had a spine of steel. And he was an impeccable gentleman.</p>
<p>Every now and then there is a death which gives us pause, a legacy which makes us stop and reevaluate our own lives and values, that has us thinking how much more we can do with our time and our resources and the balance between our public and our private lives. Every now and then there is a model of a life lived to the full that we have to stop and ponder, and see if we could possibly match up to it.</p>
<p>Ray’s life was one of those.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118846/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anton Harber is affiliated with the FXI, where he served as chair and director, alongside the subject of this article, Raymond Louw.</span></em></p>Raymond Louw will be remembered as a man of unbending principle.Anton Harber, Caxton Professor of Journalism, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/983182018-06-15T14:01:14Z2018-06-15T14:01:14ZCapturing the Soweto Uprising: South Africa’s most iconic photograph lives on<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223342/original/file-20180615-85834-1wlhyy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Artist Johannes Phokela's ceramic memorial wall.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ruth Simbao</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/masana-nzima">Sam Nzima</a>, the photographer who captured the iconic image of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">1976 Soweto Uprising</a> <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-05-18-a-story-of-a-memorable-photograph-and-why-it-matters/#.WyOVCFUzbIU">passed away</a>on May 12, 2018. The photograph was one of six frames showing <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2014-06-12-red-herrings-plague-search-for-mbuyisa-makhubu">Mbuyisa Makhubu</a> carrying 12-year-old Hector Pieterson who was shot by police, and Hector’s sister, Antionette Pieterson (now Sithole) running alongside. </p>
<p>Sensing the impact these photographs would have in exposing the cruelty of apartheid, Nzima hid the roll of film in his sock. Following the release of the photograph worldwide, the police were <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/masana-nzima">ordered</a> by the apartheid government to kill Nzima if they found him taking any photographs. When he was summoned to John Vorster Square, the dreaded police headquarters in Johannesburg, he went into hiding. His career as a journalist for the anti-apartheid newspaper, <em>The World</em>, came to an abrupt end.</p>
<p>While Nzima’s photograph quickly became known as the most evocative photograph to emerge from the struggle against apartheid, initially few people associated the photograph with him. At times it was erroneously attributed to acclaimed photographer <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/peter-sexford-magubane">Peter Magubane</a>. </p>
<p>Just over a year later <em>The World</em> was <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/apartheid-government-declares-19-organisations-unlawful">banned</a> by the apartheid government, but Nzima’s photograph lived on. Printed onto numerous T-shirts, posters and pamphlets, it became virtually synonymous with protest.</p>
<h2>Protest and (over)exposure</h2>
<p>What happens to images that appear over and over again in the visual economy? Art historian <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2013-01-18-obituary-colin-richards-1954-2012/">Colin Richards</a> <a href="http://history.msu.edu/hst830/files/2013/09/Simbao_TheThirtiethAnniversaryoftheSowetoUprisings_ReadingtheShadowinSamNzimasIconicPhotographofHectorPieterson.pdf">suggests</a> that powerful images can also be extraordinarily vulnerable, for when they are sensationalised overexposure can weaken the historical moments they capture.</p>
<p>In 1989 liberation struggle stalwart Albie Sachs made a similar assertion when he presented the paper
<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/file%20uploads%20/memorandum_on_the_culture_and_resistance.pdf">“Preparing Ourselves for Freedom”</a> at an ANC in-house seminar on culture. He argued that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the power of art lies precisely in its capacity to expose contradictions and reveal hidden tensions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sachs warned that the repetitive use of visual portrayals of struggle icons such as guns, clenched fists and protest slogans merely flattened meaning and impact. His call to ban the statement “culture is a weapon of struggle” was contentious and ignited an intense debate. Respondents such as historian Rushdy Siers <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/concluding-remarks">argued</a> that culture is based on lived experience, and “vivas, raised fists… AK’s and Amandlas” were indeed the lived experiences of cultural workers.</p>
<h2>The photograph’s shadow</h2>
<p>In Nzima’s original photograph the three figures cast a deep shadow on the ground. However, many versions of this image that were silkscreened onto protest posters and T-shirts flattened the image and omitted the shadow. Artworks that drew from this image, such as Kevin Brand’s <a href="http://history.msu.edu/hst830/files/2013/09/Simbao_TheThirtiethAnniversaryoftheSowetoUprisings_ReadingtheShadowinSamNzimasIconicPhotographofHectorPieterson.pdf">duct tape mural</a> on the outside wall of Musée de Dakar (1998) in Senegal, and Ernest Pignon-Ernest’s <a href="http://pignon-ernest.com/">public murals</a> at Warwick Triangle (2002) in Durban reintroduced the shadow, suggesting that this powerful photograph withstood potential numbing often induced by repetition.</p>
<p>Recalling philosopher Roland Barthe’s <a href="https://arthistoryunstuffed.com/roland-barthes-pleasure-text/">assertion</a> that texts need shadows in order to be productive and subversive rather than sterile, the shadow of this photograph and its numerous re-representations can be read as a metaphor for the rich debate that this image continues to bring to the surface. Commemoration is contested, and Nzima’s photograph has raised numerous debates.</p>
<p>An important question to ask is: to what degree does a powerful photograph reduce commemoration to the name of one person, thus overlooking the tragedies of other individuals who were killed on the same day? Due to the wide reach of Nzima’s photograph, it was initially believed that Hector Pieterson was the first student to be killed by the police. But oral testimonies <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/soweto-76-reflections-on-the-liberation-struggles-commemorating-the-30th-anniversary-of-june-16th-1976/oclc/70686405">suggest</a> that Hastings Ndlovu was not only the first to be gunned down, but was also deliberately sought out by the police. </p>
<p><a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2015-10-29-messing-with-the-western-art-cannons-masters">Artist Johannes Phokela</a> created a ceramic memorial wall that is dedicated to student leader Tsietsi Mashinini. It was <a href="http://history.msu.edu/hst830/files/2013/09/Simbao_TheThirtiethAnniversaryoftheSowetoUprisings_ReadingtheShadowinSamNzimasIconicPhotographofHectorPieterson.pdf">unveiled</a> at the 30th anniversary of June 16 in 2006. The memorial is shaped like an exercise book and the grouting between the tiles represents the lines on the pages. </p>
<p>This commemoration does not erase the memory of Hector Pieterson. Nzima’s photograph is portrayed behind the words of Mashinini that are written on the wall. Representing an open book, the commemorative wall suggests a willingness to accommodate counter-narratives of the uprising. As such, the horrific events of this day are not flattened, but are presented as stories or texts with shadows.</p>
<h2>History reanimated</h2>
<p>The persistence of Nzima’s photograph is remarkable. Not only was it used on T-shirts, posters and pamphlets in the 1980s, but it has reappeared in the form of artworks, memorials, monuments, and numerous cartoons, including the <a href="http://history.msu.edu/hst830/files/2013/09/Simbao_TheThirtiethAnniversaryoftheSowetoUprisings_ReadingtheShadowinSamNzimasIconicPhotographofHectorPieterson.pdf">work</a> of cartoonists Sifiso Yalo and Zapiro. The fact that it raises ongoing debate is important, as this works against the grain of much government-led commemoration that tends to reduce historical events to one-dimensional interpretation. </p>
<p>One of the most poignant forms of response to this iconic image is the live re-enactment of the photograph. When I participated in the 2006 commemorative march from Morris Isaacson High School to the Hector Pieterson Memorial in Orlando West, a group of young people ended the march with a re-enactment of the famous Nzima photograph.</p>
<p>This performative engagement with Nzima’s photograph, like the recent <a href="https://www.news24.com/Video/SouthAfrica/News/watch-sowetos-spirit-in-1976-and-rhodes-must-fall-in-2015-20160608">correlations</a> between the Soweto Uprising and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/16/the-real-meaning-of-rhodes-must-fall">Rhodes Must Fall</a> movement, is critical in terms of the reanimation of history. Not only are the historical events of Nzima’s photograph recalled, but new generations redefine events on their own terms and in relation to their own contexts. This brings alive the shadow of this iconic photograph.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98318/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruth Simbao receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. </span></em></p>The persistence of Sam Nzima’s June 16 photograph is remarkable. The shadow in the photograph can be read as a metaphor for the rich debate that this image continues to bring to the surface.Ruth Simbao, SARChI Research Chair in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/795432017-06-15T17:54:46Z2017-06-15T17:54:46ZSouth Africa has failed its young people. What can be done about it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174077/original/file-20170615-24999-m0p6rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is more than 40 years since young people, first in Soweto, and then around the country, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">rose up against the apartheid regime</a>. Initially their protest was against the introduction of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools. But it quickly spread into a general uprising against apartheid.</p>
<p>Four decades later and more than two decades after democracy, what prospects do young South Africans have?</p>
<p>The end of apartheid should have heralded a new South African dream for the generation born at its demise. The “<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27146976">born frees</a>” comprise about one fifth of the population. If the definition of youth is extended to include those between 15 and 34, they make up almost <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P02114.2/P02114.22015.pdf">55% of the population</a>.</p>
<p>The hope was that this generation would be living radically different lives from the young people who rose up in 1976. But that dream is <a href="http://www.ci.org.za/depts/ci/pubs/pdf/general/gauge2015/ChildGauge2015-lowres.pdf">still out of reach for most</a>. <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/news/sa-children-hardest-hit-by-poverty-2092671">Two thirds</a> of the country’s children live in poverty. About <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2017/02/14/what-south-africa-can-do-about-youth-unemployment-in-the-short-run">50%</a> of young people are without jobs.</p>
<p>Without doubt, there have been key improvements. Education is now provided to all, and years of schooling have increased; child support grants have made substantial differences to nutrition and wellbeing; the delivery of public housing has helped many secure a home for the first time. </p>
<p>Yet the quality of life and opportunities for young people are still defined, to a large extent, by the legacies of their parents. This also means that young South Africans are in no position to help drive economic growth. The country is missing its <a href="http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2006/09/basics.htm">demographic dividend</a> moment.</p>
<p>So what can be done about it? An initiative that connects researchers and local governments, combined with a <a href="https://youthexplorer.org.za/">web tool</a> that draws together detailed local information about young people, could help policy makers take a fine-grained rather than a scatter-gun approach to support youth wellbeing. </p>
<h2>Missed chances</h2>
<p>Life’s chances are determined by the quality of education. And that in turn is determined by the income of parents. South Africa’s schooling systems has failed young people abysmally. Drop out rates are <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/general/149291/shocking-drop-out-rates-where-in-south-africa-the-fewest-kids-make-it-to-matric/">shockingly high</a>, with nearly half the country’s learners leaving the schooling system before they matriculate.</p>
<p>These numbers are dismal enough. But there’s an added twist. Unless a young person passes matric – or gets a tertiary qualification – their chances in the labour market are slim. An employer generally doesn’t distinguish between three years of schooling or six or eight or even ten.</p>
<p>It has given rise to a desperate group of young people known as <a href="http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_343153.pdf">NEETS</a>, which stands for Not in Employment, Education or Training. They can include young people with matric, but all are unemployed and few have prospects for further education.</p>
<p>The government has consistently committed to putting youth development high on its national agenda. It has put a number of initiatives in place, including: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>The adoption of a new youth policy in 2015. More recently, President Jacob Zuma promised that all government departments would prioritise programmes that are critical to youth development. There’s little evidence that the national youth policy and the ones that came before achieved anything.</p></li>
<li><p>In 2014 the National Treasury implemented a youth incentive employment tax to encourage employers to give young people their first foot in the door of an increasingly tight labour market. It’s too early to assess whether this is making a difference.</p></li>
<li><p>The creation of a policy-oriented research project on employment, income distribution and inclusive growth at the University of Cape Town (UCT) to look into the stubborn problems of youth unemployment, among other issues. The youth unemployment project is due to present its findings in the next few weeks.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Clearly more needs to be done. Later this month local governments will be asked to play a more proactive role in youth development. This could be a critical contribution.</p>
<h2>Fresh attempt</h2>
<p>A local approach could be significant because the spatial legacy of apartheid still largely determines a person’s life chances. This means that there are vast differences between young people based on where they live. This includes income, education and employment opportunities. </p>
<p>A web tool, called the <a href="https://youthexplorer.org.za/">Youth Explorer</a> , has been developed to help a host of players, including policy makers, to access information about young people in a particular area. It does this by drilling down into conditions in every ward across the country. </p>
<p>The Youth Explorer also allows for comparisons within provinces and between different rural and urban areas, allowing policymakers to compare one area to the country as a whole. </p>
<p>To illustrate its usefulness, take the <a href="https://youthexplorer.org.za/compare/municipality-KZN286/vs/ward-79800103/">information that’s been put together comparing</a> Nkandla, President Jacob Zuma’s rural home constituency, and Sandton, one of the country’s wealthier urban areas. The profile shows that:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>22% of the population is between 15 and 24 years of age compared with just 10% in Sandton, </p></li>
<li><p>Just under 50% of young people aged between 20 and 24 have completed matric or higher. The comparable figure in Sandton is about 88%,</p></li>
<li><p>the NEETS category is about 31% in Nkandla and less than 7% in Sandton,</p></li>
<li><p>76% of young people live in households with no access to the internet in Nkandla, compared with 13% in Sandton,</p></li>
<li><p>more than three quarters of people live in households where there is no employed adult, compared with 10% in Sandton, and </p></li>
<li><p>More than 50% of Nkandla homes have no electricity, hardly any have flush toilets (13% have no toilets at all), and 33% live in overcrowded households (defined as more than two people to a habitable room). In Sandton, only 2% have no electricity, everyone has access to a flush toilet and only 1% live in overcrowded households.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Detailed information like this could lead to focused policy interventions that are in tune with young people’s local realities, and conversations that may be able to break the inter-generational cycle of inequality and poverty area by area. </p>
<p>It could help ensure that the South African dream of the “Born-Free” generation may not be entirely lost.</p>
<p><em>Emily Harris and Pippa Green co-authored this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79543/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ariane De Lannoy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The end of apartheid should have heralded a new South Africa for the generation born at its demise. But that hasn’t happened.Ariane De Lannoy, Senior Researcher: Poverty and Inequality Initiative, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/610242016-06-20T13:43:27Z2016-06-20T13:43:27ZSouth Africa’s youth speak out on the high cost of finding work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126726/original/image-20160615-14057-ju5s0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Young people understand the value of education but find fees prohibitively high in a context of widespread unemployment and low incomes.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">REUTERS/Mark Wessels </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The voices of the youth are often neglected in discussions about the problems they encounter in finding work. Unemployment is one of the biggest challenges young people face globally. But the absence of young voices on the subject stands in the way of understanding and solving the problem. </p>
<p>Youth unemployment in South Africa is a problem – and it appears to be getting worse. Between 2009 and 2014, the share of 15- to 34-year-old youth in the working population of the country <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=6395">fell</a> from 42.6% to 39.8%. And in the first quarter of 2016, the unemployment rate (including only active job-seekers) for 15- to 24-year-olds was about 55% – <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0211/P02111stQuarter2016.pdf">up 5%</a> on the previous year. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/csda">Centre for Social Development in Africa</a> at the University of Johannesburg conducted research among employed and unemployed 18- to 25-year-olds in five of South Africa’s nine provinces. It focused on their experiences of unemployment, employment and job-seeking. </p>
<p>The research, to be published soon, will hopefully amplify the voices of youth and thereby inform more realistic interventions to combat a serious developmental problem. Youth insights point to issues that are rarely considered in policy making circles. Three are highlighted in this article:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the problem of accessing higher education;</p></li>
<li><p>the costs of looking for work; and</p></li>
<li><p>exploitation.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Higher education</h2>
<p>Young people understand the value of education, particularly higher education. But, as recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-student-protests-are-about-much-more-than-just-feesmustfall-49776">student protests</a> have shown, the cost of a university education is prohibitively high in a context of widespread unemployment and low incomes.</p>
<p>As one of the survey respondents, from Orange Farm in the Gauteng province, said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Without skills you are nothing, matric [South Africa’s school-leaving certificate] is nothing, so that’s why I am here now because I do not have skills.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When students were awarded bursaries or loans by the <a href="http://www.nsfas.org.za/content/">National Student Financial Aid Scheme</a> to attend university, it was common for these only to be paid out months after the academic year had started. But costs like transport, books, and registration and residence fees had to be covered immediately. Because their families were not in a position to support them financially, such students were at risk of dropping out of university.</p>
<h2>The costs of finding work</h2>
<p>Youth face many more immediate challenges in their search for work, including the costs of looking for work and filling out applications. </p>
<p>There are no functional job centres where relevant, up to date information about job openings and job advice can be found. Most youth find this information on the internet or in newspapers. They also often have to use the internet and computers for job applications. Few have these resources at home, so they are forced to use (sometimes distant) internet cafés. </p>
<p>In addition, many employers demand paper applications, which entails the costs of printing, copying, certification and postage.</p>
<p>A Cape Town respondent spoke of the cost:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was in June or May this year I applied for a job, right, but the cost was to go to the post office to post those application forms. I think it cost me, like, R23. It was an envelope, a brown envelope plus photocopies. I think it was R50 with transport to town.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The general finding is that these job-seeking resources and services are inordinately expensive for people without regular income, and this limits the frequency with which they apply for positions. </p>
<p>In addition, young black South Africans typically <a href="http://www.cssr.uct.ac.za/sites/cssr.uct.ac.za/files/pubs/WP283.pdf">live far</a> from where jobs are located. This makes it expensive to travel to interviews or apply for jobs in person. A return trip is in the region of R30-R40 (about US$2-$2.63). For working people, this may mean spending more than a third of their monthly income on travel. For those hunting work, the costs are prohibitive.</p>
<h2>Exploitative practices</h2>
<p>A third and particularly disturbing finding is the exploitation of work-seekers’ vulnerability. Respondents repeatedly spoke of fraudsters advertising nonexistent jobs, soliciting payments for processing applications or for pre-job training. </p>
<p>These often large payments are made to what appear to be legitimate and professional employers or agencies advertising on the internet, in newspapers or by text message.</p>
<p>According to a respondent from the North West province,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I also got a message. Last year. That guy told me, at least give me R2,500 and I will give you a job at the mine. I said, “Wow! I’ll see what I can do …’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When applications are made in person, gatekeepers like human resources managers and secretaries frequently solicit bribes to ensure applications are considered rather than discarded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Where are you going to get money to bribe this person? You are not working, you are looking for a job and you are expected to pay before even getting your name in the company’s books … Where are you expected to get the money from? You don’t have the bribe money, you are out. – East London respondent</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Several young women and men also spoke of being asked to perform sexual favours to improve their chances of securing a job. A respondent from Johannesburg said: ”… there was a guy there and he said I am cute and if am willing to do some little things for him he can definitely give me a job.“</p>
<h2>The need for intervention</h2>
<p>The costs of looking for work often lead to the perverse outcome where job-seekers, having fallen into debt to meet these costs, find themselves worse off than before and even unable to pay for basics like food. Many respondents told us of tensions and strained relationships and, less frequently, trouble with moneylenders.</p>
<p>While young job-seekers were mostly not deterred from trying to find work, these obstacles point to the need for sustained, local-level and accessible interventions – informed by young people. Some feasible interventions include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>universities and financial support agencies improving the efficiency of their administrative operations to ensure prospective students are paid loans and grants timeously; </p></li>
<li><p>employers simplifying the job application process. They could, for example, stop demanding onerous documentation like hard copies; </p></li>
<li><p>government (and others) opening accessible and functional job centres where authentic information can be accessed at a low cost. These should include subsidised application-related resources like access to the internet, printers and certification facilities; </p></li>
<li><p>job-seekers being able to access publicly-funded travel subsidies; and </p></li>
<li><p>law enforcement agencies cracking down on job fraudsters and extortionists.</p></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zoheb Khan received funding from the Department of Labour to conduct this research.</span></em></p>The huge problem of youth unemployment in South Africa appears to be getting worse. New research will hopefully amplify their voices and inform more realistic interventions to combat the monster.Zoheb Khan, Researcher, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/609802016-06-15T13:14:25Z2016-06-15T13:14:25ZHow South Africa’s young women activists are rewriting the script<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126718/original/image-20160615-14042-36x4x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women students have been at the forefront of South African university protests.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What does it means to celebrate Youth Day in 2016, when many young South African women are little more than second-class citizens?</p>
<p>Young women are disproportionately exposed to <a href="http://southafrica.unfpa.org/topics/young-people-1">gender-based violence</a>. Women aged between 15 and 24 are four times as likely to contract HIV than men in the same age group. In 2013 99,000 female school pupils got <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2015/09/06/Alarming%20stats%20for%20teen%20pregnancy">pregnant</a> and less than a third reentered school. </p>
<p>It is against this backdrop that we should think about the role young women play in the country today. </p>
<p>In 1976 women students were deeply involved in the struggle against discriminatory education but were not viewed as actors in their own right. Forty years later women students are not willing to take a backseat again.</p>
<h2>(Black) women still marginalised</h2>
<p>In June 1976, at the time of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Soweto Uprisings</a>, the apartheid government was relentlessly pursuing and intimidating Black Consciousness leaders and organisations. In September 1977 it killed <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Stephen Bantu Biko</a> for his beliefs.</p>
<p>Four decades on, Biko’s beliefs are influencing a whole generation of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-bikos-black-consciousness-philosophy-resonates-with-youth-today-46909">students</a>. Many of the recent students’ <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-student-protests-are-about-much-more-than-just-feesmustfall-49776">campaigns</a> have drawn on the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/The_meaning_of_Black_Consciousness_by_Ranwedzi_Nengwekhulu.pdf">Black Conciousness</a> philosophies of Biko and <a href="https://theconversation.com/revisiting-frantz-fanon-memories-and-moments-of-a-militant-philosopher-59914">Frantz Fanon</a> to give content to their struggles. </p>
<p>These philosophies hold that black Africans need to free themselves from the psychological oppression of racism. It also means that black Africans must mobilise in “safe spaces” that don’t necessarily include <a href="https://theconversation.com/revisiting-frantz-fanon-memories-and-moments-of-a-militant-philosopher-59914">white allies</a>.</p>
<p>Back in 1976 the experience of black pain was central to students’ mobilisation, as it is now. But many women students feel that their experience of the pain of gender oppression is ignored. </p>
<p>That has changed. As Mbali Matandela <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-03-30-rhodes-must-fall-how-black-women-claimed-their-place">explains</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As a member of this group of feminists, I have had the chance to voice the pain that black females experience based on how the “ideal” personality of an elite white male has influenced how black men treat black women and LBTQIA [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex and Asexual] people … we decided that the way this movement was happening needed to change. And it did. Strong black women took up leadership positions in the movement and LGBTQIA members have taken leadership positions in our sub-committees, joint-meetings and protests. The movement also changed one of the songs we were singing at protests to make it inclusive of women.
The song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYwgmOxhUvk">Nantsi indonda emnyama</a>”, meaning: “Here is a black man” was changed to include black women by adding “Nangu umfazi omnyama”, which means: “Here is the black woman” …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Women students have not been afraid to embrace the label of feminist. They have been instrumental in starting the <a href="http://witsvuvuzela.com/2016/04/26/wits-fmf-feminists-stand-in-solidarity-with-rureferencelist-protestors/">#EndRapeCulture campaigns</a> on various campuses. Black women students have started to use the feminist concept of intersectionality to argue that oppression refers not only to race but also to gender, sexuality, sexual orientation and able-bodiedness. </p>
<p>Women were at the forefront of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/university-fees">#Feesmustfall</a> campaign. Many men became profoundly uncomfortable when gender took the front seat in campus decolonisation struggles. At Stellenbosch University it became such a <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-08-27-not-open-says-open-stellenbosch">bone of contention</a> that a number of male students left the #OpenStellenbosch movement. This confirmed some men’s entrenched patriarchal attitudes.</p>
<h2>Uniting marginalised bodies</h2>
<p>Black women’s bodies are closely linked to the decolonisation project, which envisions a shift from Eurocentric curricula and institutional cultures to Afrocentric knowledge production. As was written in <a href="http://www.jwtc.org.za/resources/docs/salon-volume-9/FINAL_FINAL_Vol9_Book.pdf">Johannesburg Salon</a> on the decolonisation of tertiary education:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have realised that the systems of exploitation which confront oppressed people at this institution cannot be tackled internally, precisely because they are rooted in the world at large. Black bodies, female bodies, gender non-conforming bodies, disabled bodies cannot become liberated inside [of the University of Cape Town] whilst the world outside still treats them as sub-human. The decolonisation of this institution is thus fundamentally linked to the decolonisation of our entire society. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The women students in the #EndRapeCulture campaigns were not afraid to <a href="https://theconversation.com/where-south-african-defamation-law-stands-on-naming-and-shaming-58246">name and shame</a> those whom they believed had got away with rape without any sanction from their institutions. They were also not afraid to employ topless protests as part of their strategies to raise consciousness about the endemic <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-universities-can-begin-to-tackle-rape-culture-on-their-campuses-57596">rape cultures</a> on campuses.</p>
<p>These students use the body as a site of resistance – for purposes of subversion, but also as a medium for change and movement building.</p>
<p>The women students have generated a certain feminist solidarity with their sisters all over the country through their #EndRapeCulture campaign. </p>
<p>Based on their intersectional approach they have linked their struggle with those of the LGBTIQ community. New concepts have become commonplace at South African universities. These include “<a href="http://queerdictionary.blogspot.co.za/2014/09/definition-of-cishet.html">cishet</a>” – people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth and are heterosexual – as well as “trans”, or transgender people. </p>
<p>We can call the topless protests a form of the “<a href="http://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/rhodes-students-protest-half-naked-against-rape/">politics of the spectacle</a>”. It is visual and in your face. It is also called “sextremism”, aimed at shocking the viewer.</p>
<p>The politics of the spectacle has found common ground with the Economic Freedom Fighters, whose <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2016/05/17/WATCH-Punching-pushing-and-shoving-as-chaos-erupts-in-Parliament-to-remove-EFF">spectacles in parliament</a> are well known. But it is not the same. These young women are committed to the principles of gender equality and to showing how women’s bodies are harassed all the time.</p>
<h2>A great deal achieved in little time</h2>
<p>These women have only been in the public eye for a short time, but have done more to break the silence around gender-based violence, especially in the tertiary education space, than some other longer-term initiatives. </p>
<p>The government, through its now defunct Ministry of Women, Youth and People with Disabilities, tried to deal with gender-based violence by establishing a National Council on Gender-Based Violence in the wake of one <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2013/10/31/The-Anene-Booysen-Story">particularly shocking</a> and brutal gang rape and murder. Women students – working without funding or the support of established structures – have raised consciousness and managed to get universities to appoint task teams to investigate sexual harassment on campuses.</p>
<p>In 1976 women students were deeply involved in the protests but not on a gender platform. Forty years later it is women who are now instrumental in raising consciousness about race and gender oppression, and who are at the forefront of mobilisation around gender-based violence. These women are fierce, principled and accountable to their constituencies. This is what we want from our future leaders.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60980/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Gouws receives funding from the National Research Foundation (NRF)</span></em></p>Women students have not been afraid to embrace the label of feminist, leading a wave of university protests in South Africa during 2015 and 2016.Amanda Gouws, Professor of Political Science, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/609762016-06-15T09:31:13Z2016-06-15T09:31:13ZStrategic lessons South Africa’s students can learn from the leaders of 1976<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126544/original/image-20160614-22383-bci5v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Soweto schoolchildren protest against Afrikaans in 1976.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.aamarchives.org/file-view/category/44-apartheid.html?start=20">Anti-Apartheid Movement Archive, Bodleian Library, Oxford UK</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This month forty years ago, thousands of Soweto school children took to the streets to <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">protest</a> the racism and inadequacy of Bantu Education. That moment has come to symbolise the role that young people have played and can play in shaping South Africa’s political discourse. It remains a touch point for student activists today. </p>
<p>The marches in June 1976 took shape around a unifying issue of immediate importance to the students: the imposition of Afrikaans as a teaching medium in black classrooms, whose curriculum was dictated by the then Department of Bantu Education. </p>
<p>Images from the march are filled with posters proclaiming “<a href="http://www.gutenberg-e.org/pohlandt-mccormick/archive/detail/DSCN2080.jpg.html">To Hell With Afrikaans</a>” and “<a href="http://www.gutenberg-e.org/pohlandt-mccormick/archive/detail/DSCN1817.jpg.html">Vorster and Kruger are rubbish</a>”. This refers to John Vorster, the prime minister of South Africa and one of apartheid’s architects, and his police minister <a href="https://www.google.co.za/search?q=jimmy+kruger&rlz=1C1CHWA_enZA634ZA634&oq=Jimmy+Kruger&aqs=chrome.0.0l6.804j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">Jimmy Kruger</a>. </p>
<p>The juxtaposition of these claims is an important one. It speaks to how Soweto children began to straddle the space between local and immediate concerns and a national political agenda. This enabled them to transcend the issues of their classrooms and rejuvenate the struggle against apartheid on a national, and indeed international, scale.</p>
<p>Forty years later South Africa is again in the midst of a political movement led by students - this time on university campuses across the country. Today’s student activists are often compared to the generation of 1976. In mass marches through Johannesburg and Pretoria the form of their protest has prompted the <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/fee-must-fall-protest-reminiscent-1967-uprising">comparison</a>. </p>
<p>In their articulation of ideologies like <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/The_meaning_of_Black_Consciousness_by_Ranwedzi_Nengwekhulu.pdf">Black Consciousness</a> they echo some of the key thinkers of that period. But their <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-student-protests-are-about-much-more-than-just-feesmustfall-49776">protests</a> remain largely constrained by the campuses on which they happen. In light of these struggles, it is useful to consider how the students of 1976 tackled similar problems.</p>
<h2>The Afrikaans issue</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://africanhistory.about.com/od/apartheid/a/AfrikaansMediumDecree.htm">Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974</a> declared that in black schools across South Africa Afrikaans must be used equally with English as a medium for teaching non-language subjects like mathematics and social sciences. </p>
<p>Students and teachers alike struggled to teach and learn in a language for which they were ill-trained and ill-equipped with textbooks and other materials. </p>
<p>Historian Helena Pohlandt-McCormick has written that the Afrikaans medium policy “<a href="http://www.gutenberg-e.org/pohlandt-mccormick/PM.c5p3.html">embodied everything that was wrong with Bantu Education</a>”. She points to its disregard of sound pedagogy, and, more importantly, of the voices of the parents, teachers, and learners on whom it was imposed. </p>
<p>By the middle of the 1976 school year, students had organised themselves in individual protests. Many focused on the imposition of Afrikaans, others addressed student-teacher relations and corporal punishment at individual schools.</p>
<p>They were inspired and encouraged to connect these issues to the broader political system by a range of influences in their homes, communities, and classrooms. Among these were university students who had been “conscientised” through the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/definition-black-consciousness-bantu-stephen-biko-december-1971-south-africa">Black Consciousness Movement</a> and expelled from rural “bush” universities during waves of protest in 1972 and 1974. The most prominent of these was <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abram-ramothibi-onkgopotse-tiro">Ongkopotse Tiro</a>.</p>
<p>After Tiro was expelled from the University of the North (today the <a href="http://www.ul.ac.za/">University of Limpopo</a>, outside Polokwane), where he was a prominent student leader and Black Consciousness proponent, he took up a job teaching history at Morris Isaacson High School in Soweto.</p>
<p>Though he was fired in 1973 and killed in exile in Botswana in 1974, some of his students, including <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/teboho-tsietsi-mashinini">Tsietsi Mashinini</a>, became key leaders in the 1976 uprising. </p>
<h2>Addressing structural oppression</h2>
<p>Tiro and other young teachers encouraged their students to connect the particular grievances of their own situation – the inequities and injustices of Bantu Education – to the structural oppression meted out by the apartheid state. </p>
<p>This was a lesson students brought to their organisation of the protests on 16 June, and one that played an increasingly important role in the weeks and months that followed. Students in the Soweto Students Representative <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/soweto-students-representative-council-ssrc">Council</a> (which compromised many of the student leaders who had organised the June 16 march) called for their parents to stay away from work, and to boycott white-owned shops and products. By August the committee focused its energies on organising a student and worker stay away for the end of the month. According to Sibongile Mkhabela, a member of the SSRC, this was intended to achieve </p>
<blockquote>
<p>more than only a march. […] This was the day to hit the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Open_earth_and_black_roses.html?id=MP4wAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">white economy</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A few months later students rallied their families to participate in a Black Christmas to mourn those who had been killed by police since June. </p>
<h2>June 16 forty years later</h2>
<p>University students of 2015-16 have some key things in common with their 1976 predecessors. They have changed the tenor and shape of political discussion around education in South Africa, more effectively than any other single movement since 1994.</p>
<p>They have re-interrogated the ideologies that animated students in 1976. Their engagement with <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-bikos-black-consciousness-philosophy-resonates-with-youth-today-46909">Black Consciousness and Biko</a>, with <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-fanon-continues-to-resonate-more-than-half-a-century-after-algerias-independence-43508">Fanon</a> and with <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">pan-Africanism</a> has led to a movement to <a href="https://theconversation.com/decolonising-the-curriculum-its-time-for-a-strategy-60598">decolonise</a> universities’ faculty and curricula. </p>
<p>But today’s students have struggled to move their activism beyond universities. Not withstanding significant gains in the movement to end the exploitative practice of <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-01-13-three-reasons-why-feesmustfall-protests-will-continue">outsourcing jobs on campuses</a>, for which the Fallist movements of 2015-16 deserve a great deal of credit, student movements today have yet to create enduring alliances with workers outside the university, or with school students. </p>
<p>Beyond shared ideology, the 1976 generation, and, perhaps even more so, the university students of the early 1970s who taught and inspired them, may offer some strategic lessons. </p>
<p><em>The author is co-editor of <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/students-must-rise/">Students Must Rise: Youth Struggle in South Africa Before and Beyond Soweto ‘76</a> published by Wits University <a href="http://witspress.co.za/">Press</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60976/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Heffernan's position is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She observed and participated in the October-November 2015 FeesMustFall protests. </span></em></p>Forty years after the students uprisings of 1976, South Africa is again in the midst of a political movement led by students.They have changed the tenor and shape of political discussion around education.Anne Heffernan, Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow NRF Chair: Local Histories, Present Realties., University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/609432016-06-15T09:30:48Z2016-06-15T09:30:48ZBelow the radar, South Africa is limiting the right to protest<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126574/original/image-20160614-22380-p5lhr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A protester smokes marijuana during a march calling for the legalisation of cannabis in Cape Town.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year marks the 40th anniversary of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">June 16 uprisings</a> in South Africa. The apartheid regime responded brutally to the ensuing protests, with police shooting live ammunition at protesting schoolchildren.</p>
<p>Given this history, to what extent does South Africa respect the right to protest today? The question should be asked with renewed urgency in the wake of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012">Marikana massacre</a> and other police killings of <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2013-03-28-cops-acquitted-of-andries-tatanes-murder">protesters</a>.</p>
<p>To date public attention has focused mainly on the part <a href="http://www.saps.gov.za/about/stratframework/annual_report/2014_2015/SAPS_AR_2014-15_for_viewing.pdf">police</a> play in repressing protests. What’s been neglected is the role of municipalities in administering gatherings in terms of the <a href="http://www.gov.za/documents/regulation-gatherings-act">Regulation of Gatherings Act</a>. </p>
<p>In terms of the Act, municipalities must consult with the police and protest conveners (organisers). If agreement is not reached about conditions for gatherings, then municipalities may impose conditions or even prohibit gatherings on very narrow grounds. This means that the Act gives municipalities tremendous power to regulate gatherings, but this power must be exercised reasonably. </p>
<p>Research over five years on the right to protest in 11 municipalities – the findings of which are to be published in a book later this year – showed that none adequately respected the right. Most municipal restrictions imposed on protests did not meet the test of reasonableness. </p>
<h2>Restrictions on the right to protest</h2>
<p>In an attempt to understand the extent of the problem a research team travelled around the country and collected notices that protest conveners were required to submit to municipalities in terms of the Act. The team also considered other documents detailing municipal conditions on gatherings.</p>
<p>They also interviewed municipal officials. Police data about four of these municipalities were also mined, as were media reports. Interviews and focus groups were also conducted with activists and protest conveners. This yielded rich information about the scale of the protests and their reasons, the protest actors and municipal responses to the protests.</p>
<p>The data suggested that most protests took place peacefully and uneventfully. But what also became apparent when comparing municipal data and media coverage was that peaceful protests <a href="https://theconversation.com/voices-of-the-poor-are-missing-from-south-africas-media-53068">were often not covered by the media</a> as they did not involve disruption or violence.</p>
<p>Yet, in spite of protests remaining largely peaceful, all the municipalities surveyed instituted unreasonable restrictions on the right to protest. Most of them required conveners to seek a letter from the institution or person they were marching against, guaranteeing that they would be willing to accept the protesters’ memorandum of demands. This requirement made these protests subject to a veto by the very institution or person being targetted.</p>
<p>The City of Johannesburg required conveners to seek permission from a ward councillor to protest. The <a href="http://www.localgovernment.co.za/locals/view/191/Rustenburg-Local-Municipality">Rustenburg</a> municipality, in the North West Province, insisted that traditional chiefs – sometimes the target of the protesters – give permission for protests in areas that fall under their authority. </p>
<p>In 2010, the <a href="http://www.makana.gov.za/">Makana municipality</a> banned a planned protest by the Unemployed Peoples’ Movement against unemployment because “a meeting with the officials must be called for a follow-up on previous matters and tabling of the current ones”. </p>
<p>But the Act does not stipulate how grievances should be resolved before an organisation takes to the streets. The municipality’s reason for prohibition was also not supported by the Act. Many other examples of official censorship of protests emerged during the research. </p>
<p>Municipalities have misapplied the Act to stifle protests since the early 2000s. For instance, the <a href="https://www.academia.edu/10012607/Thabo_Mbeki_and_dissent">Johannesburg</a> and <a href="http://www.durban.gov.za/Pages/Contact_Us.aspx">eThekwini</a> municipalities have prohibited protests by social movements like the Anti-Privatisation Forum, the Soweto Electricity <a href="http://www.ngopulse.org/article/electricity-crisis-south-africa">Crisis Committee</a> and <a href="http://abahlali.org/">Abahlali baseMjondolo</a> on grounds that are not recognised by the Act. But this trend intensified from 2012 onwards.</p>
<p>In 2012, embarrassed by the scale of the protests, the Department of Co-operative Governance, under which municipalities fall, issued a circular to local governments, appealing to them to improve channels of communication.</p>
<p>The circular called for, among other things:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[working] with the office of the speaker [and] public participation units to ensure ongoing engagement between councillors and communities and residents.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Unintended consequences</h2>
<p>The circular was clearly well-meaning. But it had unintended consequences. </p>
<p>After receiving the circular, some municipalities introduced a filtering system for protests. They required conveners to show that they had held a meeting with the municipal officials that were the targets of the protests. At the very least, they had to show that an attempt was made to bring all parties to the table.</p>
<p>Perversely, this requirement drove up the number of “unlawful” protests, as aggrieved protesters simply took to the streets without informing the municipality. These were generally protesters who were at loggerheads with the very municipalities they were being required to negotiate with, and who had lost faith in their ability to respond effectively to grievances. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126592/original/image-20160614-22404-1ixi0s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126592/original/image-20160614-22404-1ixi0s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126592/original/image-20160614-22404-1ixi0s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126592/original/image-20160614-22404-1ixi0s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126592/original/image-20160614-22404-1ixi0s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126592/original/image-20160614-22404-1ixi0s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126592/original/image-20160614-22404-1ixi0s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters carry sticks as they chant slogans during a protests in Johannesburg in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Flawed application of the law</h2>
<p>These findings pointed to fundamental flaws not only in the application of the law, but in the Act itself. Municipalities claim they have the power to decide whether to allow protests or not. But the Act makes it clear that they cannot do so arbitrarily. For instance, they can only prohibit gatherings when there are imminent threats to public safety that cannot be contained through less drastic means.</p>
<p>A great many protests are against the performance of the very municipalities or authorities that claim the power of granting “permission” or not (the Act merely requires conveners to notify the municipality of their intention to gather, not seek permission). </p>
<p>This means that municipalities have intolerable conflicts of interest. They are both player and referee. The number of “illegal” protests increased when municipalities made it increasingly impossible to protest “legally”. This led to widespread and entirely inappropriate criminalisation of protests.</p>
<p>The police were also more likely to disperse such “illegal” protests with force as they did not have a hand in facilitating them. </p>
<p>But in some municipalities bureaucrats exercised relative independence from the politicians, and took administrative decisions about protests. Municipalities were more likely to be open to criticism when the responsible officer had a vested interest in the criticisms being aired. This happened, for example, if the person agreed with the protesters’ criticisms or was an opposition party supporter.</p>
<h2>Putting repression in check</h2>
<p>Massacres are the ultimate form of censorship. This is because public displays of state violence can stun dissenters into silence. This was as true on <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">June 16</a> 1976 as it was on August 16 2012 at <a href="https://theconversation.com/marikana-shining-the-light-on-police-militarisation-and-brutality-in-south-africa-44162">Marikana</a>. </p>
<p>But Marikana was not a particularly successful massacre for South Africa’s democracy-era rulers. It hastened political shifts away from the African National Congress and it did not dampen protest levels.</p>
<p>So it is hardly surprising that local governments – many of which are in the firing line of protests – are seeking ways to curtail the right to protest through administrative censorship, rather than relying on the police to use brute force. This they do by making it difficult – even impossible in some cases – for protesters to take to the streets.</p>
<p>This shift suggests that ruling elites recognise the fact that they lack the capacity to repress dissent openly. It is unlikely that there will be more Marikanas, in the sense of an organised plan to use state violence to quell protests. The ruling bloc simply cannot afford the political costs.</p>
<p>This is good news for South Africa’s democratic movements. But it does mean that public attention needs to focus on the more preemptive, less visible and ultimately less well understood forms of restrictions that limit the right to protest.</p>
<p><em>The author’s new book, “Protest Nation: The Right to Protest in South Africa”, will be published by <a href="http://www.ukznpress.co.za/">UKZN Press</a> later this year.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60943/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Duncan has received funding from the Open Society Foundation for South Africa for this project. She is affiliated with the Right 2 Know Campaign. </span></em></p>Despite protests in South Africa being largely peaceful, municipalities are placing unreasonable restrictions on the right to protest, which sometimes amounts to a veto of that right.Jane Duncan, Professor in the Department of Journalism, Film and Television, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/606582016-06-13T09:17:14Z2016-06-13T09:17:14ZSoweto uprising: four decades on, South Africa still struggles with violent policing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126261/original/image-20160613-29216-e0c2pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A recent protest by South African schoolchildren which had to be quelled by an under-resourced police force</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>June days in South Africa can be dark, cold and short. The sun rises late and sets early. Highland frosts feel their way through blades of blemished veld; mists mask roads ahead and behind. The month brings with it the year’s mid-point and shortest day; a chance to reflect on what has been, and what may lie ahead.</p>
<p>Five days before the equinox South Africa celebrates <a href="http://www.gov.za/youth-day-2015">Youth Day</a>. Forty years ago on 16 June 1976, thousands of school children in Soweto, Johannesburg, braved the Highveld cold to protest the apartheid government’s decision that they be educated in a strange tongue: <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Afrikaans</a>. Out on the street the students were confronted by the South African Police force (SAP). Teargas was followed by gunfire. Young bodies fell; cameras <a href="https://www.google.co.za/search?q=photograph+of+hector+pieterson&rlz=1C1CHMO_en-GBZA648ZA648&tbm=isch&imgil=-nSZWu7xmToV5M%253A%253BZcLIipsW1ZziwM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.fimomitchell.com%25252Fblog%25252Fsoweto-apartheid%25252F&source=iu&pf=m&fir=-nSZWu7xmToV5M%253A%252CZcLIipsW1ZziwM%252C_&usg=__2QMDkEQA2eQXBvR0tY9wnnDW7a0%3D&biw=1920&bih=911&dpr=1&ved=0ahUKEwiv4_fj6fTMAhVJL8AKHVIvBzMQyjcINg&ei=vmRFV6-MJ8negAbS3pyYAw#imgrc=3dkBnajiT0w66M%3A">clicked</a>. The apartheid system was shaken irrevocably.</p>
<p>Youth Day takes its name from the energy and courage of those young learners. But had the police not responded as they did, 16 June might simply be another winter’s day. Police work is practical and symbolic. Through interactions with police, the state communicates with its public. In 1976, police actions embodied the unjust, indefensible and violent state attitude towards black citizens.</p>
<p>It exposed, in ways not seen since the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville</a> massacre on March 21, 1960 the violence through which apartheid was upheld. South Africans remember June 16, 1976 because youth took to the streets, but also because police looked them in the eye and pulled their triggers. The ripples set in motion by the youth of ‘76 had by the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/youth-politics-south-africa-1980s">mid-80s</a> crippled the economy, led to <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/state-emergency-south-africa-1960-and-1980s">states of emergency</a>, public “unrest”, and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-africas-foreign-relations-during-apartheid-1948">international sanctions</a> against the apartheid regime.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126138/original/image-20160610-29209-i2z0d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126138/original/image-20160610-29209-i2z0d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126138/original/image-20160610-29209-i2z0d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126138/original/image-20160610-29209-i2z0d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126138/original/image-20160610-29209-i2z0d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126138/original/image-20160610-29209-i2z0d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126138/original/image-20160610-29209-i2z0d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">South African children visit the Hector Pieterson memorial in Soweto outside Johannesburg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Lerato Maduna</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Nelson Mandela freed</h2>
<p>The early '90s saw <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/nelson-mandela-freed">Nelson Mandela</a> freed from prison and liberation movements <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/fw-de-klerk-announces-release-nelson-mandela-and-unbans-political-organisations">unbanned</a>. The South African Police <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02167/04lv02264/05lv02335/06lv02357/07lv02372/08lv02379.htm">re-positioned</a> itself as an objective arbiter of political tension while being accused of using undercover agents to stoke ethnic violence, at a time when the country recorded its highest ever murder rate. </p>
<p>In 1995, a year before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (<a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/truth-and-reconciliation-commission-trc">TRC</a>), the police service <a href="http://www.saps.gov.za/resource_centre/publications/police_mag/police_magazine_feb_2015.pdf">merged</a> with the 10 <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/homelands">Bantustan</a> police agencies to form a single South African Police Service (SAPS). <a href="https://www.issafrica.org/uploads/2016-05-19-SAPS-Shake-Up-Presentation.pdf">Civilian ranks</a> replaced military, and mustard-coloured vehicles were painted cloud-white.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.csvr.org.za/wits/papers/papsapjr.htm">Training curricula</a> were revised to embrace human rights, and “<a href="http://www.csvr.org.za/index.php/publications/1462-a-review-of-community-policing.html">community policing</a>” was imported from the wealthy West. <a href="http://www.csvr.org.za/wits/papers/papbruc6.htm">Transformation policies</a> saw black members and women rising through the ranks rapidly. All the while, the TRC shone a light on the SAP’s <a href="https://www.enca.com/look-vlakplaas-apartheids-death-squad-hq">torture farms</a>, as well as on the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk-exile">detention camps</a> of the liberation movements. It exposed habits of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/09/world/apartheid-torturer-testifies-as-evil-shows-its-banal-face.html?pagewanted=all">torture</a> and <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2013/10/29/remember-the-past-and-question-the-present">murder</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126136/original/image-20160610-29238-n7o1o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126136/original/image-20160610-29238-n7o1o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126136/original/image-20160610-29238-n7o1o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126136/original/image-20160610-29238-n7o1o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126136/original/image-20160610-29238-n7o1o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126136/original/image-20160610-29238-n7o1o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126136/original/image-20160610-29238-n7o1o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nelson Mandela and his wife Graca Machel attend a ceremony to receive the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report on October 29, 1998.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the run-up to the '94 elections, the African National Congress (ANC) believed, perhaps not unexpectedly, that once police were under an elected-ANC’s control, South Africans would accept their authority. They expected that citizens would accept the criminal law as legitimate and cease the daily violence. This violence had evolved as a product of oppression and as a tool of political resistance, security and punishment in <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-10-02-south-africas-mysterious-murder-rate/#.V1q4r7t97IV">preceding decades</a>.</p>
<h2>“Dog deals with a bone”</h2>
<p>Instead crime and violence spread, sending politicians scrambling. In 1999 then Minister of Safety and Security <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/pebble.asp?relid=2932">Steve Tshwete</a> <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/2012/12/20/police-public-order-expert-proves-a-recalcitrant-witness-at-marikana-inquiry">declared</a> that government would “deal with criminals in the same way a dog deals with a bone”. With this posturing the ANC <a href="https://www.issafrica.org/uploads/CW41Dixon.pdf">stripped law-breaking</a> of the historical, socioeconomic and political overtones through which it had <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Governing-through-Crime-in-South-Africa-The-Politics-of-Race-and-Class/Super/p/book/9781409444749">explained violence under apartheid</a>, framing “criminals” instead as bad people who threatened democracy.</p>
<p>In 2000 South Africans were shown precisely how a police dog “deals with a bone” when video emerged of four white officers and their dogs <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/30/chrismcgreal">mauling</a> three Mozambican men. It was a reminder that, like its violent crime, the horrors of apartheid policing were not snuffed out by elections.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/onmq-g2kx-o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Four white South African policemen set their dogs on three Mozambicans as a ‘training exercise’ and videotaped it. PLEASE NOTE: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC VIOLENCE.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In response to public anger over crime, the 2000s saw government increase police budgets at rates above inflation. Police ranks swelled to 200 000 and the rhetoric of police “service” was abandoned in favour of “force”. <a href="http://fromtheold.com/news/new-police-ranks-south-africa-welcome-sapf-2010040117527.html">Military ranks</a> were reintroduced in 2010 amid calls by leaders for police to “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1584641/Kill-the-bastards-South-African-police-advised.html">kill the [criminal] bastards</a>” and “<a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/police-must-shoot-to-kill-worry-later---cele-453587">shoot to kill</a>”. Some officers have been so emboldened that they have filmed and shared their shootings.</p>
<p>Even the 2012 horrors that happened at the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012">Marikana</a> mine, where police shot and killed 34 striking mineworkers, were <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbAlgo_pzVg">captured</a> on police cell phones. Scenes from that day have become as iconic as those of a dying <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hector-pieterson">Hector Pieterson</a>, photographed in Soweto 40 years ago this week. Has anything changed?</p>
<p>The SAPS is far from a perfect organisation, but it is not dysfunctional. Many SAPS officers face extreme challenges, like policing a claimed average of <a href="http://www.saps.gov.za/about/stratframework/annual_report/2014_2015/SAPS_AR_2014-15_for_viewing.pdf">40 protests a day.</a> </p>
<p>A further challenge is <a href="http://www.khayelitshacommission.org.za/images/towards_khaye_docs/3_Part_Three.pdf">patrolling</a> informal settlements without lighting or roads where murders can exceed 100 per 100 000 residents (the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/gsh/en/big-picture.html">global average</a> was 6.2 in 2012) and where residents <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/sinoxolos-boyfriend-allegedly-stabs-state-witness-20160509">fear attack from neighbours</a> if they speak to detectives.</p>
<h2>Police salary a dream</h2>
<p>In a country with a <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=7281">27% unemployment rate</a> and where 60% of workers <a href="https://africacheck.org/reports/do-60-of-south-african-workers-earn-less-than-r5000-a-month/">earn less</a> than R5 000 a month, a police starting salary of R13 000 is the kind of thing dreams are made of. Of the nearly <a href="http://www.saps.gov.za/about/stratframework/annual_report/2014_2015/SAPS_AR_2014-15_for_viewing.pdf">200 000 job applications</a> received by the SAPS in 2014/15, just 1.4% (2 827) were successful.</p>
<p>It is in this context that the job is something to be coveted. But this doesn’t necessarily produce professional, integrity-based policing. Rather, many officers –- including the <a href="http://city-press.news24.com/News/Farlams-Marikana-findings-Leading-role-players-slammed-20150628">most senior</a> –- do what they must to please their managers and present a public image of competence.</p>
<p>For some this means doing the best job they can do, <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/policeman-shares-lunch-homeless-woman-photo-goes-viral">responding</a> to people’s needs compassionately and efficiently. But for others it means <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFiCiJeQMo8">abusing sex workers</a>; shooting <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2016/03/14/CT-filling-station-robbery-ends-in-shooting-four-killed">without fair warning</a>; <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2009-10-17-top-cops-knew-stats-were-cooked">manipulating</a> crime data; <a href="http://www.icd.gov.za/sites/default/files/documents/IPID_Annual_Report%20_2014-15.pdf">torturing</a> criminal suspects; (allegedly) <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/pics-cops-terrorise-vyeboom-residents-2026300">assaulting</a> vulnerable villagers; even <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2015/08/25/Mido-Macia-all-eight-accused-found-guilty-of-murder">beating a man to death</a> for publicly questioning police authority – when they believe nobody is watching.</p>
<p>It’s an <a href="http://www.elections.org.za/content/Elections/2016-Municipal-Elections/Home/">election year</a> in South Africa. The opposition Economic Freedom Fighters’ <a href="http://www.economicfreedomfighters.org/full-document-2014-eff-elections-manifesto/">manifesto claims</a> that “20 years [into democracy], the police still kill people!” It promises the party will protect street vendors from “police harassment” and communities from “intimidation from the police”. That the party believes these promises will win it votes reflects very poorly on the SAPS.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126135/original/image-20160610-29222-82412e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126135/original/image-20160610-29222-82412e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126135/original/image-20160610-29222-82412e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126135/original/image-20160610-29222-82412e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126135/original/image-20160610-29222-82412e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126135/original/image-20160610-29222-82412e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126135/original/image-20160610-29222-82412e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Policemen stand in front of the Hector Pieterson memorial during the 30th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nevertheless, more South Africans are <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0341/P03412013.pdf">satisfied</a> with police than not, even though only <a href="http://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/Dispatches/ab_r6_dispatchno56_police_corruption_in_africa.pdf">49% trust</a> them. Ultimately, <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0341/P03412013.pdf">South Africans agree</a> that to address crime, government should spend money on socioeconomic interventions rather than police. Indeed, what democracy has not yet delivered is an equal country or economy, in the absence of which policing will always likely defend the status quo established by extreme concentrations of power and wealth.</p>
<h2>Volunteer for the police</h2>
<p>In my many years of working with the SAPS as a volunteer and researcher, most police action I have observed has targeted poor, black men. But one needn’t be a researcher or reservist to know this: <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/death-andries-tatane-service-delivery-protest-free-state-sparks-national-outrage">Andries Tatane</a>, who was killed by police during a service delivery protest, was black and poor, the Marikana workers were black and poor, the residents of <a href="http://www.khayelitshacommission.org.za/images/towards_khaye_docs/Khayelitsha_Commission_Report_WEB_FULL_TEXT_C.pdf">Khayelitsha</a> (one of Cape Town’s largest and deadliest townships) are overwhelmingly black and poor.</p>
<p>The tragic irony is that, despite their relatively good salaries, many police officers remain poor. Their income is stretched to support networks of vulnerable kin. So while one group of relatively poor men and women police another, a political and economic elite enjoys the fruits of a violently unjust society.</p>
<p>As such, police signal to the country’s vulnerable young men that the state does not trust them. The signals entrench divisions already established by a landscape many young people literally cannot afford the taxi fair to traverse in search of a job in a market which rejects almost half of young job-seekers. All of this happens against the backdrop a welfare system which offers subsidies to almost every category of vulnerable person but for able bodied, unemployed young men.</p>
<p>The South African Police Service is a very different organisation from its apartheid predecessor. And yet, in its actions and inactions, it is at times too easy to see similarities between them. Ultimately, one cannot reform a police service without reforming the context in which it operates. In South Africa, a broken education system continues to <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/education/2016/04/19/poor-education-traps-black-youth-in-poverty">trap the poor majority</a> in poverty.</p>
<p>Despite huge changes South Africa remains a country of stark, violence-inducing inequalities and injustices, wounds which police officers cannot heal. Instead, through their work they both shepherd and protect, criminalise and abuse the vulnerabilities and struggles of millions of South Africans still waiting for their winter to end.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60658/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Faull previously received funding from the National Research Foundation.</span></em></p>It is exactly forty years since the Soweto uprising in June 1976 where the South African police met the students with brutal force. How much has changed in terms of policing?Andrew Faull, Senior Researcher at the Centre of Criminology, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.