EFF to feel heat of university politics

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) student command has scored critical Students’ Representative Council (SRC) victories across universities in the country over the past two weeks.

These include the University of Cape Town (UCT), from the DA Students’ Organisation, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Westville campus, Mangosuthu University of Technology and the University of Zululand, from the SA Students’ Congress (Sasco), among others.

This is a big blow to Sasco, which has dominated universities since the early 1990s when it was formed.

This victory is critical for the EFF for one major reason: the EFF is now seen, at least in rhetoric, to be exactly what Sasco was or should have been in both its ideological posture and the programmes in its earlier years.

The EFF is therefore now in a position to test its high-minded ideas on the hard reality of the higher education system and see how they measure up.

Students will therefore be able to see whether the university system is generally hostile and even punitive to revolutionary ideas and attitudes, whether students get sucked into senates and councils where they are powerless to do much, or if student leaders lose their way once they are elected.

This is crucial because the EFF as an organisation has avoided governing responsibilities, which has helped it to stay ideologically pure and untested so that it can keep screaming idealism and populist rhetoric without the burden to implement, govern or take responsibility in any way.

In less than 12 months, the EFF will be evaluated when another round of SRC elections comes around. It is no exaggeration that once the organisation fails in this university space of dreamers and high expectations it will struggle to convince the parents outside university of similar ideals.

The next 12 months will therefore be very crucial for the EFF.

It is important, at a time like this, to look back at the founding of Sasco, the principles that forged its alliances and the vision that drove student activism of the time.

More often than not, when an organisation loses its appeal to the people it has either deviated from its founding mission and/or its founding mission has been accomplished, and therefore the student community sees no reason for its continued existence.

Given the current student challenges, the latter is unlikely.

In September 1991, Sasco was formed. Among those who played a significant role in its formation was Robinson Ramaite, who became its first president, Kgomotso Masebelanga, who became its first secretary, David Makhura and Mfundo Nkuhlu, among others.

Many of these leaders have gone on to accomplish great things in their post-university life, which speaks to Sasco’s ability to develop future leaders.

Higher Education Minister Naledi Pandor remembers the vision of Sasco at its formation: “The primary mission for Sasco was to locate the struggle against apartheid on South African campuses, in student residences, in lecture halls and in teaching programmes.”

This made the main vision for Sasco “to be the creation of a democratic system of education in South Africa”.

It meant that “Sasco had to fight for access to education, for free education, change of curriculum, transformation of higher education and democratisation of higher education”.

Did Sasco achieve its goals and if not, what has it learnt?

Firstly, the organisation has learnt that the country’s higher education and university system is strongly tied to the neoliberal global formula and market fundamentalism, such that there is very little room to pull the system from the jaws of the capitalist class without collapsing the whole higher education system.

By its design, funding model, international rating agencies, A-rated scientists and world-renowned researchers, the system is interlinked so that if you revolutionise it in any way all the other elements will disintegrate and leave you naked, alone and empty.

When this happens, even those who supported you initially will begin to wonder whether, as an organisation, you oversimplified a complicated problem and destroyed a good thing.

I saw this happening at UCT when students with bursary obligations, rich family expectations and financial aid started seeing Sasco’s disruptions of the academic year for the interests of the vulnerable and poor students as a great inconvenience, making Sasco their enemy.

In the country’s oldest university, nobody wanted to listen.

The current education system is unashamedly neoliberal, creating winners and losers without any care for how the playing field is tilted and rigged to predetermine who rises and falls.

It marches on with winners, dropping the losers into the belly of the cruel world. Students from poor families go for days without food, they fail and lose their shelters, they fail some more and lose their futures, and the system barely even notices.

Young people arrive at university and make all sorts of mistakes.

On their own and away from the firm hand of parents they fail, and without any real support structure they fall by the wayside.

And the university marches on with winners, without ever noticing.

It has always been the duty of Sasco to watch over those students to ensure that the dreams of their parents do not disappear for lack of support.

Sasco has done all it can to ensure that the poor students, the struggling students and the unfinanced students do not have to fold their dreams.

But despite Sasco’s efforts over the years, including securing private funding and setting extra support structures for students, the problem has always persisted.

So what is the problem? Well, the EFF is about to find out.

The problem is that the system cannot be overthrown, so all student organisations with a socialist posture must try to improve the system where they can, creating what now is called “inclusive capitalism” in the university space.

It means a student organisation must accept the legitimacy of the current university system, which is governed largely by white professors for the benefit of white students, thereby affirming the values of a divided university space, and try to govern student affairs within this system.

After a while the EFF – whatever its promises may be – will realise that the university system is too powerful and too hostile.

Broken, and with a system that continues to serve one group more than the other, the EFF may lose legitimacy and students will realise that after many years of trying its best within the system Sasco is better positioned to lead student affairs than any newcomer with untested radical statements.

Diko is ANC spokesperson in the Western Cape