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Because in that moment on the floor of the Wits Senate House, Mcebo Dlamini held all the power over the thousands of protesting students who had barricaded themselves inside the university’s main administrative building.
Once the spark was lit at Wits, the #FeesMustFall movement spread like wildfire to some of South Africa’s most elite institutions – Rhodes, the University of Cape Town (UCT), Stellenbosch and Pretoria.
These students have redefined the art of protest. It was seen in the historic holding of a Wits council meeting in their presence at Senate House; the “storming” of Parliament on Wednesday; and in how they forced the usually obstinate ANC secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, down from his perch to go and accept a memorandum from student leaders gathered at Luthuli House.
Hashtag StudentsRule!
It was also in the simple things. The students uniting beyond political and racial differences, the elevation of female student leaders to the forefront, students cleaning up Sauer Street after marching on ANC headquarters or mopping the floors of Senate House, where they were camped, to white students at UCT forming a human chain to prevent the arrests of their protesting black counterparts. This has been a protest of many firsts.
In the ensuing hysteria, however, some have been hasty to define #FeesMustFall as the beginning of our own Arab Spring.
They point to the groundswell of support for the students, the organised nature of the #FeesMustFall movement and the unprecedented breach of the parliamentary gates as the signs of an uprising in the making against the state.
But people are getting carried away. The anti-fee movement might have rewritten the protest manual and forced some powerful figures in academia and government on to their knees, but it is no Arab Spring.
In fact, those who have been at the forefront of the movement have never characterised it as an uprising against the state.
They have been clear from the beginning that this is about easing access to higher education for those who cannot afford it. It is a rallying call against the immorally high costs of university tuition, boarding and other associated payments.
Even when they forced their way into the parliamentary precinct, the students were clear they merely wanted the leaders they had elected to address them and listen to their demands for free higher education.
It’s a pity that the paranoid securocrats in Parliament and our badly trained riot police considered them a threat big enough to repel with brute force and stun grenades.
Revolutions do not happen overnight. Nevertheless, frustrations about corruption, maladministration, mismanagement, bad governance and out-of-touch politicians stuck in their ivory towers are spawning resistance movements that authorities will find increasingly difficult to ignore.
The anger of the students – as seen outside Parliament, on university campuses, outside Luthuli House and at the Union Buildings on Friday – is adding fuel to this rising fire.
But political power is too entrenched and, frankly, it is too powerful, to be dislodged by students alone.
