by LUKE ZUNGA
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – IT is 50 years ago when thousands of students gathered and marched against Bantu Education on 16 June 1976, a day marked as the turning point in the South African struggle for freedom.
On this day, youths laid down their lives to fight the apartheid dragon.
Significantly, June 16 swayed the whole nation into a fighting mood, and a large resource for freedom fighters, internally and externally.
Thousands of youths exited South Africa to join Umkhonto we Sizwe. From there it took 15 years to release Nelson Mandela and other prisoners on 11 February 1990 to chart a new democracy.
Although June is portrayed as refusal to be taught in Afrikaans, language was the entry point to fight the apartheid government.
After June 16, South Africa experienced Fees Must Fall protests and demonstrations at universities from October 2015 to December 2017.
After freedom there was no generic way to change the fortunes of black people. Black families remained trapped in poverty.
This generated into students and their parents failing to pay university entrance fees and repaying the student loans they had accumulated.
Before his forced departure from office, President Jacob Zuma announced free education for poor families whose parents earned below R350,000 a year, and in 2018 the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) was formed.
In “Fees Must Fall” the youths changed the way higher education was funded.
Today March and March has turned into a fearsome movement, capable of a new turning point in the political, economic and social life of South Africa.
It is difficult to stop a popular protest. South Africans are rallying to expel Africans from other African countries out of South Africa.
The unprecedented move saw African countries sending buses and planes to transport their citizens out of South Africa. The end product is unclear.
South Africans, from all ages, are sending chilling messages of their own frustrations with the government, making March and March more generic and more fearsome.
The best way for foreigners is to give way and leave.
Politicians are timid about stopping it. South Africans have been tormented by a freedom which means little to them.
They have been waiting for the fruit of their struggle, and it did not come, except for a few. People have lost hope and are targeting something which draws the attention of the government.
In this respect, poor migrant workers are targeted.
It is clear South Africans are using “illegal foreigners” as a rallying point against their exclusion from economic participation.
When a country is developing, it uses migrants to do menial and household jobs while citizens engage in broader growth and economic focus areas.
Black South Africans are making no progress. Thousands came out to march in the small town of Jozini, a small town in northern KwaZulu-Natal.
There are about 20 shops owned by foreigners and about 100 black African domestic and farm workers, too few “illegal foreigners” to justify massive protests.
This is a dangerous development. President Ramaphosa is scared. Former President Zuma is forced to support this scourge in fear of losing votes in his dominant KwaZulu-Natal Province.
The protests could generate instability and violence in South Africa.
African governments are unable to solve their economic issues. The starting point is failure to adhere to the tenets of economics.
Economics is defined simply as “a science of production and distribution of wealth”. The starting point is to produce wealth, then distribute it.
African governments start by distributing and pay less attention to production. This results in slow growth, unemployment, stubborn poverty amid protests.
Youth Day speeches reverberated throughout South Africa, but none touched on the crucial solution.
To some extent there is confusion as to what the real problem is. That is why some South Africans took the matter to the High Court, case 2023-122607 in Pretoria, to contest the actual issues before a judge.
Although South Africa has policies on paper, they are not being followed.
Politicians leave policy execution to technocrats whose crude understanding of “broad-based economic empowerment” is limited to capitalist models, and that white people must give or include black people, instead of government directly capitalising black people into production.
The issues of exclusion and discrimination are still as true today as they were during apartheid. Youth Day reminds us that the struggle is not over, not only in South Africa, but also throughout Africa.
– CAJ News