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Don’t let violent extremism defeat the student cause

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My heart broke as I listened to Palestinian diplomat Saeb Erekat on the BBC’s HARDtalk the other day. He confessed to the host, Stephen Sackur, that he had nothing to show for 23 years of negotiations except continued Israeli settlements.

His words have been swirling in my head ever since: “Yes, Stephen, we have been defeated. [Benjamin] Netanyahu has defeated us.”

This article is not about Israel. It is about the defeat of those of us who have been calling for the racial transformation of our universities. I was appalled to see the disruption of a University of Cape Town (UCT) senate meeting by students, and to learn that a bus had been set alight or bombed.

This kind of violence has no place at a university. The students should know the power of their own actions when they are peaceful. It was their peaceful protest that brought down the statue of Cecil John Rhodes and it was peaceful protests led by students at my alma mater, the University of the Witwatersrand, that forced government to impose a moratorium on fee increases for 2016.

With such achievements, why would anyone resort to violent attacks on university property and management? Does this not strengthen the hand and voice of the critics of the student movement? Is this perhaps not the time for the leadership of the student movement to stand up and give direction, or have they also been defeated?

The denunciation of violence must be accompanied by soul-searching by the university’s professoriate and management.

Four years ago, I moved from Johannesburg to Cape Town to become a full-time academic. In Helen Zille’s inelegant formulation, I was planning on being a “refugee” from public life. My head of department tried unsuccessfully to get me involved in transformation committees. I refused. I wanted to get on with my academic work.

The turning point came when the university downgraded race as a criterion in student admissions. Some members of staff and students now stopped short of calling me a coward.

In February 2013, I relented and wrote an article asking how an overwhelmingly white senate could be expected to vote objectively on such a racially charged matter. For me, this was a straight sociological no-brainer. Vice-chancellor Max Price thought differently. In a letter to the newspaper, he said I had “insulted the senate” by making “the presumption that intelligent, educated people cannot make ethical and rational decisions because they are overwhelmingly interested in preserving the interests of those of the same skin colour”.

At the time, I did not know only five out of 200 full professors were black and not one black South African woman was a full professor at the university. I did not know there were only 49 women out of 1 400 members of academic staff. I did not know the university had only hired two black academics in the period between 2009 and 2013. Those figures dazed me. I had to speak out.

At every turn, Price explained away the situation by claiming that it took 20 years to become a full professor, even as it was pointed out to him this had not been the case with many white professors. To be fair, he later changed to say it took 10 to 20 years. And he pointed out that there had been one black female professor. I took that to mean that one was better than zero, even when that woman had left for another university.

In the course of these debates, I pleaded with the university council not to go down this route. It was the surest invitation of government intervention in the university’s affairs. My impassioned pleas fell on deaf ears and now there is a bill before Parliament to do exactly what I had warned against.

I had no idea the reaction might take the form of student mobilisation until an invitation arrived from the students to chair a meeting to announce their campaign to dislodge the Rhodes statue.

I declined because I was tentative about returning to an activist life. I made the excuse that I did not want to presume to speak for black academics on campus. At this point, the Black Academic Caucus had been formed and I asked the students to get a representative from there.

Now joined by the black caucus, the students would take this struggle on the race issue to a level of mobilisation I had not seen since the 1980s.

It has not helped matters that David Benatar, head of the philosophy department for 15 years, has been inflaming the situation with racially offensive articles and actions. The students just roll their eyes when I urge them to respond by strengthening their intellectual arguments. Why someone should head a department for such a long time boggles the mind in the same way it does with politicians clinging to power.

While any form of student violence is to be deplored, professors and university management must also ask themselves what role they have played in creating our troubles. Were they so blinded by their power that they never thought a rebellion of this magnitude could happen? One thing I know for sure is that just as white power was irrevocably challenged 21 years ago, white universities will never be the same again.

The question is whether there is now the leadership that will help them cross their own Rubicon. Failure to do so will ensure that violent extremism has its day. And then we will truly have been defeated. Or as Aubrey Matshiqi put it: “It’s either we change voluntarily, or the next generation will force the change upon us.”

Mangcu is associate professor at UCT

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