#WitsProtests #Asinamali #FeesMustFall2021 - Still no Uhuru!

 

It is shocking what has been playing out in the last few days in Johannesburg. Police have decided to deal with the protesting students from the University of the Witwatersrand as if they were criminals. Like it was in 2015/16 at Wits - every student is a suspect! - but even more so if you are a black student. It is a disgrace for a state that builds its very raison d'etre on a post-apartheid non-racialist, democratic ideal. Meanwhile, the political elite and their repressive state aparatus deals with protesting students that seek social justice in the way any white apartheid regime would have dealt with any black protesting group: riot police, dogs, guns, stun grenades, and eventually, murder. That is what is happening and it is not only deeply saddening; it is deeply enraging.

I feel indeed very upset by this. I read the posts of Fasiha Hassan and many other #FeesMustFall activists from the 2015/16 era now on Twitter and like me they are deeply moved. How, in 2021, do academically deserving students still need to battle financial exclusion? How? I am just so upset by our political leadership who seems so unimaginative, so self-important and self-centred, and seemingly unable to fix all the broken systems and deliver on all the broken promises. 

Since Sunday I am in Phutadijhaba, Qwaqwa, in the Eastern Free State, hiding out here to write three chapters of the book "From #RhodesMustFall to #FeesMustFall" which has been in the making (and in parts published) since 2016. It is abundantly clear that the lessons from #FeesMustFall have not been learnt by student leaders and activists; and they have not been learnt by the political leadership and the police. Or rather: all the wrong lessons have been retained.