Students running scared

Shanti Aboobaker

ZANELE sent a direct message to @IOL’s Twitter account last Wednesday.

It said students were being rounded up, targeted as problematic students, and assaulted by University of Johannesburg’s security guards.

She wondered if Independent Media could urgently send a journalist to report on the incident.

We eventually got back to her the next morning.

She was terse on the phone. The last words she said to me were “I can’t be heard on the phone”.

Zanele is not the only student who is scared of increasing levels of violent repression being meted out on members of supporters of South Africa’s burgeoning student movement.

Almost two weeks ago, a first year student called her mother in a panic.

She said a comrade of hers was on his way to a safe house.

Members of #OpenStellenbosch were too scared to go home, and were sleeping at friends’s homes.

The student on his way to sleep at a friend’s home, Mohammed “Mo” Shabangu, had good reason to be paranoid.

A voice note he sent to the national student movement task team leading #FeesMustFall, which comprises two student representatives from each of the country’s tertiary institutions, landed up on a website and trended on Twitter that week.

His uncle, who he describes as being part of the ANC’s “boys club”, also phoned him that week.

The uncle’s message was clear: “Mo, you are bringing shame upon our family.”

Mo’s reaction to attempts to fight his constitutionally enshrined rights to freedom of expression and of association is equally unequivocal.

“We are not doing anything illegal, or morally reprehensible. So, I’m not scared of who is listening to this phone call,” he said.

Mo is part of the country’s widening non-aligned youth movement, encouraged by the huge gains made by South Africa’s black liberation movement, who can congratulate their achievement of the vote for future black generations.

But this seems to be at the root of the state securocrats paranoia around the movement: local government elections are to be held next year.

And this is precisely why Jacob Zuma, speaking at the ANC’s provincial congress in KwaZulu-Natal this weekend, reduces them to mere pawns of what he truly believes is a “third force” intent on regime-change.

Members of #FeesMustFall want progressive university management that does not brutalise, beat up and suspend students who only want a fair chance to get a degree that will equip them to operate in the real world.

Shanti.aboobaker@inl.co.za

@shantiaboobaker