Abstract
The segregation enforced during apartheid has not only ensured widely disparate South African university landscapes, but also framed constructions of activism in historical discourses of racial disenfranchisement and marginalisation. As a result, activism is implicitly and explicitly associated with disadvantaged universities; with black students; and specifically directed at an apartheid government. If there were expectations – certainly on the side of government – that the transition to a democratic state would allay student activism, this was not the case. Instead, student activism – still manifested in a critical mass of black students – has not only intensified but has degenerated into disturbing displays of destruction and violence. The recent spate of student protests, which centred on matters of access, free education and decolonisation, and more recently, gender-based violence, has provoked defensive, and at times, antagonistic and discouraging responses from universities – placing students firmly in an opposing discourse. Seemingly, while the political climate has shifted, universities have yet to reconceptualise their institutional, academic and spatial environments into contexts conducive to open and mutual deliberation. Current impressions from university responses suggest that activism, as symbolised through student protests, is out of place in democratic spaces. In considering the relational positioning of universities to activism and, hence, to students, the interest of this article resides, firstly, in how notions of activism might be reimagined within democratic contexts and, secondly, in how universities might reposition themselves from being sites of activism, to being advocates of social, economic and ethical reform.
Introduction
Universities in South Africa are different and disparate, not only in terms of academic programmes, but in terms of their particular histories and stratified student populations. Such are the depth and scope of the incongruencies between what is commonly referred to as historically advantaged institutions and historically disadvantaged institutions, that to talk about South African universities as if it implies a commonality in terms of opportunity and purpose, is a misnomer. From the outset, the design and establishment of apartheid’s higher as well as basic education system was aimed and skewed at ensuring the privilege of a white minority population at the expense of, and explicit subjugation of a black majority. By the time apartheid drew to a constitutional end in 1994, the differentiated higher education system comprised 26 public universities, 15 technikons (polytechnics), 120 colleges of education, 24 nursing colleges and 11 agricultural colleges, which all differed in terms of quality of academic provision, adequacy of infrastructure and facilities, and the level of state investment and funding (HESA, 2014: 9).
Post-apartheid higher education reform saw the initiation of a ‘single, national co-ordinated system that would ensure diversity in its organisational form and the institutional landscape, mix of institutional missions and programmes commensurate with national and regional needs in social, cultural and economic development’ (DoE, 1997: 2.3). By 2001, higher education institutions were either merged, unbundled or incorporated to form 11 traditional (research) universities; six comprehensive universities; one distance education institution; and six universities of technology. It was envisaged that the post-1994 institutional restructuring would engender a differentiated, diverse and articulated higher education system that resonated with the knowledge and development needs of South Africa and the imperative of achieving social justice (HESA, 2014: 10). Alongside these structural reconfigurations remains a determination to increase student access from marginalised groups – seen as pivotal to redressing historical injustices by ensuring democratisation through participation.
To date, however, the expansive post-apartheid educational reform focused on redress, transformation and democratisation has not been able to adequately address historical inequalities and inequities. There is a convergence of factors which contribute to what is commonly framed as the unfinished business of higher education in South Africa. These include the continuing under-developed institutional capacities of historically disadvantaged institutions; ensuring access and support to rural poor and working-class black students; and inadequate state support, which compromises the opportunities available to historically disenfranchised students and their communities. These factors play a dominant role in sustaining historically engineered disparities. On the one hand, these disparities, as made evident in inadequate or limited infrastructure and resources, impact on the capacity of universities to retain students and ensure programme completion. The financial barriers encountered by students are exacerbated by an unpreparedness for the academic demands of higher education. On the other hand, the more historically disadvantaged universities are flooded with increasing numbers of students, increasing the strain on already over-burdened resources. This creates difficulties in meeting the needs of students, while also attempting to sustain an academically credible institution.
While historically advantaged universities have become less and less immune to the kinds of challenges that have always beset their historically disadvantaged counterparts – particularly in relation to supporting students at risk – it would be untrue to suggest that South African universities face the same challenges, or that they have a shared understanding of student experiences. Universities are deeply contested spaces, not only because of their divided and segregationist histories, but because they have come to symbolise a societal fault line. The financial, infrastructure and human constraints, which are a defining feature of historically disadvantaged institutions, bear striking similarities to the living conditions of the majority of South Africans. Despite immense political reform, social, economic and (higher) education reform are not only unfinished, but have been left in precarious suspension. The glaring similarities, therefore, between civil society protests against poor service delivery and student protests on university campuses are not coincidental. These stem from the same root of historical oppression and injustice, which has tragically seeped into the unfulfilled promises and hope of a democracy.
Student activism in South Africa – a painful political history
Commonly, despite its inherent complexities, and whether positioned in support or opposition, activism is conceived of and directed at bringing about change. Student activism, although located within the language of an educational institution, is not always limited to the parameters or concerns of education. This is because the imperative of education and higher education cannot be extricated from its social, economic, political or cultural contexts. While it is indeed the case that certain forms of activism might be levelled at improving on-campus conditions, matters pertaining to deeper issues, such as institutional transformation and democratisation, cannot be addressed without taking into account broader societal discourses and practices. Student activism, as Altbach (1989: 105) asserts, ‘frequently serve as a social and political barometer of their societies’ – particularly in societies where freedom of expression has been or continues to be constrained.
Notions and expressions of student activism in South Africa are intricately wrapped up in ‘struggle’ politics – that is, broader societal struggles, emanating from an apartheid state. The struggle against apartheid found an especially welcome and volatile support base in historically disadvantaged or black universities. The increased state repression in the form of mass arrests, prohibitions, torture and executions that began in the mid-1960s, explains Franklin (2003: 210), created a political vacuum for black South African activism that was soon filled by students. Watershed protests, such as Sharpeville in 1960 and the Soweto uprisings in 1976, are characterised not only by their high number of deaths, but by their strong student support and leadership. This was an unexpected and ironic state of events, given that the entire design and structure of higher education for black students by the apartheid state was intentionally set up ‘with the responsibility of intellectually and politically winning students to the separate development project and generating the administrative corps for the separate development bureaucracies’ (Badat, 1999: 77). According to Badat (1999), universities designated for black students were not only specifically located in impoverished rural areas with limited social infrastructure and amenities, but also in areas far removed from the political militancy and influences of large cities.
The logic of the Bantustan project dictated that black educational institutions should be essentially staffed by blacks, but that the ideological and political control should be maintained through the employment of predominantly Afrikaner nationalists and white conservatives (Badat, 1999: 71). Appointments, as well as dismissals, of rectors, vice-chancellors, academic and senior administrative staff were made by the minister responsible for the various institutions. Upon completion of their university programmes, these black professionals would continue to serve the Bantustan communities – a prerequisite to qualify for state bursaries – thereby preserving a separate and segregated South Africa. That the apartheid regime did not expect black students to mobilise against its oppressive and repressive ideology is a commentary on the state’s racist undermining of the capacity of black students. As black and oppressed students, they were certainly not expected to voice their own opinions, and especially if these opinions were against the state. Their activism, therefore, was viewed as illegitimate, because they were black and, by assumption, voiceless.
The apartheid government truly believed that in granting black students access to higher education, regardless of the conditions of this education, black students, by virtue of their apartheid-imposed inferiority, would be grateful to the state, and act as required. What the apartheid state seemingly did not understand, is that the more students pursue higher levels of education within contexts of social and economic insecurity and inequality, the more knowledgeable they become about the world around them, and the more likely they are to push for political change (Sanborn and Thyne, 2014). Education makes apparent not only knowledge, but different skill sets and, more specifically, profitable skill sets. The more education is amplified, posits Sanborn and Thyne (2014), the greater the appeal of democracy and its accompanying rights and benefits.
In sum, it is necessary to understand that student activism in South Africa is deeply embedded in political resistance against apartheid; the kinds of protests and activism demonstrated by students during apartheid had as much to do with asserting their own voices as it did with unshackling the country from a much larger and perverse ideology. Despite their obvious autonomy and capability in calling out political and social injustices, they were not afforded any space to express their resistance. Instead, they risked expulsion, imprisonment, torture or death. Apartheid constituted a profound period of dehumanisation and oppression for the majority of South Africans. It also constituted a time of conflicting forms of protest, and how to actively oppose the state. From the non-violent ideology of Steve Biko’s black consciousness, to the launch of the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), known as Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), and which was heralded by bomb blasts at a number of apartheid offices in 1961. Although these forms of violent activism were labelled as treason by the apartheid state, organisations such as Umkhonto we Sizwe did not consider their actions as any different from those of the state. In addition to inhumane living conditions, with scant regard for (black) human dignity, detention, torture and murder of activists were considered as state protocol. As a result, violence was seen as both a necessary and legitimate means against the apartheid state.
Despite the elation with which most South Africans have welcomed a democratic state, the reality is that the end of apartheid has not yielded the kinds of social justice reforms and benefits as, no doubt, were expected. The majority of South Africans continue to live in abject poverty, with no prospect of improved living conditions and opportunities – setting the background to what is probably one of the world’s most unequal societies. For students, the promise of equal access to higher education continues to be hindered not only by financial barriers, but also by societal and social impediments, which they interpret as counter-intuitive to being citizens of a democratic society. As a result, when students protest, they easily slip into the protests of violence – akin to that which eventually overthrew apartheid – because they understand violence as a justifiable response to what they perceive as their ongoing oppression and marginalisation.
From segregation to massification and alienation
As previously stated, increasing student enrolments from excluded and marginalised communities is seen as critical to the post-apartheid government’s agenda of ensuring social justice through redressing historical injustices. In line with global trends, higher education enrolments on the African continent, and particularly sub-Saharan Africa, have grown faster than in any other region in the world – despite remaining the lowest in the world. Since becoming a democracy in 1994, South Africa has doubled the number of students in higher education, and currently has about 1 million students in the system, which constitutes 20% of the 18- to 23-year-old age cohort (Case et al., 2018: 11). This rapid growth can be ascribed to two main reasons: increased enrolment in primary and secondary education, which has created rising demands for higher education; and a growing awareness on the part of African governments of the role of higher education in national economic productivity (Akalu, 2016; Mohamedbhai, 2008).
Trow (1974) explains that in every advanced society, a broad pattern of development of higher education manifests in three phases: elite higher education; mass higher education, where participation reaches 15% of first year student registrations; and universal systems, where participation exceeds 50%. In the transition between the three phases, access to higher education shifts from being a privilege in the elite phase to a right in the mass phase and then to an obligation in the universal phase, when higher education qualifications became mandatory for full and effective social engagement (Trow, 1974). In turn, according to Trow (1974), student selection into higher education learning programmes proceeds from the primary use of the criterion of academic merit in the elite phase, to programmes designed to create social equality of opportunity in the mass phase, and then to open access in the universal phase. Massification or high participation systems therefore implies a democratisation of access to higher education insofar as it opens up participation beyond a narrow elite to lower middle class, working-class and rural poor students.
In South Africa, the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE, 1996) defines massification as the process through which participation in higher education has both increased and widened, moving away from an elite system that caters for a few individuals from privileged classes, to a mass system for larger numbers of students recruited from more diverse social backgrounds. The ‘logic’ of massification, ‘is inevitable and includes greater social mobility for a growing segment of the population, new patterns of funding higher education, increasingly diversified higher education systems in most countries, generally an overall lowering of academic standards, and other tendencies’ (Altbach et al., 2009: iii). Flowing from this understanding, some scholars, such as Mohamedbhai (2008) and Akalu (2016), have argued that increasing student enrolment, or massification is seen as critical to the democratisation of access by making higher education accessible to diverse sections of the population, and benefiting groups which, historically, have been excluded from the elite systems of higher education. Underscoring this argument is an idea that an increase in student enrolment constitutes a broadening and diversification of higher education spaces.
While the idea of high student enrolment in the context of post-apartheid South Africa is assumed to imply transformation through diversification, there is disagreement, however, on whether it has redressed past inequalities. On the one hand, critics maintain that massification in South Africa has shown little evidence of tackling social inequalities of access and participation; inequalities in terms of access and success persist even in participation systems (Badat, 2020; Marginson, 2016).
There are many complex reasons for the broken promises of higher education, which are certainly not limited to a South African context. One is, says Marginson (2016: 414), that although the social demand for higher educational opportunities is consistent and rising, ‘the needs of states and employers for educational growth are partial and episodic; and neither agency intersects with higher education institutions on a daily basis’. The other centres on universal desires for social betterment, often hinged onto higher education pursuits, that are themselves becoming universal. But, as Marginson (2016) argues, the opportunities that education is meant to bring are not universal; there is an absolute limit to the number of socially advantaged positions on offer. Massification or high participation systems of higher education, maintains Marginson (2016: 415), can never bring every family what it seeks; and when participation becomes universal, ‘at the margins of participation, students will gain no material betterment at all, though they may still gain forms of personal enlargement’. Given the universality of this desire, it is unsurprising to find that while Marginson’s (2016) research is mostly drawn from high income countries, and especially the United States, his argument is applicable to a South African context. Not only is a substantial improvement in opportunity and outcomes for black and especially working-class students yet to be realised, but, asserts Badat (2020), if access, opportunity and success were previously shaped by race, they are now largely conditioned by social class. To him, these realities undermine the expansion in enrolments and indicate that higher education is unable to effectively support and provide reasonable opportunities for success to its students (Badat, 2020).
On the other hand, there is the often unrecognised and under-explored concern of students’ sense of non-belonging and alienation, as they struggle to navigate unfamiliar spaces and discourses. By alienation, I mean a sense of displaced disconnectedness, where students cannot find necessary points of resonance for their participation or belonging. Their access to an institution does not necessarily extend to inclusion, recognition and regard. For many students, the pursuit of higher education studies also implies new living arrangements, with circumstances that are often profoundly different from their home settings. Students are required to adapt to particular institutional cultures, which are as prevalent in lecture theatres, tutorial groups, libraries and laboratories as they are in student residences and any social gatherings. This transition and the pressure to assimilate to a dominant institutional culture is amplified when historically disadvantaged students enter the spaces of historically advantaged institutions (Davids, 2019).
Evident from an increasing number of student protests, which continue to disrupt public higher education campuses, are serious concerns and questions about finances, exacerbated by deeply complex experiences of non-belonging and alienation, particularly in the case of black students at historically advantaged institutions. The kinds of frustration and hopelessness that are commonly witnessed in student protests offer brief glimpses into the neglected implications of increased student enrolments. That massification has not yielded the envisaged patterns of accessibility and participation, necessarily leads to questions not only on the topics of redress and equity, but also on the actual experiences of historically excluded students and the barriers they encounter as they enter higher education.
From alienation to activism
Putting aside the structural reform, historically disadvantaged institutions have retained their historic racially and culturally defined identities and character. These institutions have not seen the same influx of students from diverse racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds as historically advantaged ones. And, although there have been significant shifts in the student demographics at historically advantaged institutions, it is hard to pinpoint any definitive shifts in the institutional and academic cultures, with the overwhelming criticism being that these institutions continue to perpetuate a culture of white privilege (Davids, 2019). As recently as 2015, with the ‘#feesmustfall’ and ‘#rhodesmustfall’ 1 campaigns, students have called for the end of domination by ‘white, male, Western, capitalist, heterosexual, European world views’ in higher education; and for the incorporation of other South African, African and global ‘perspectives, experiences [and] epistemologies’ as the central tenets of the curriculum, teaching, learning and research in the country (Shay, 2016).
By the democratic government’s own admission, transformation efforts have not translated into any significant shifts in the structure and content of the curriculum; the curriculum ‘is inextricably intertwined with the institutional culture and, given that the latter, remains white and Eurocentric at the historically white institutions, the institutional environment is not conducive to curriculum reform’ (DoE, 2008: 91). Despite this bleak assessment, more than a decade ago, the same criticisms prevail: there is something anachronistic, something entirely … wrong with a number of institutions of higher learning in South Africa. There is something profoundly wrong when, for instance, syllabuses designed to meet the needs of colonialism and Apartheid, should continue well into the liberation era (Mbembe, 2016: 32).
Thus far, higher education reform has seemingly fixated its transformation agenda on massification, without taking account of the spaces into which students are being enrolled, thereby creating a volatile mix. On the one hand, an over-riding emphasis on increasing student enrolment continues to create a critical tension between social equity and redress, and the myriad of support measures and restructuring, required to meet the needs of historically marginalised students, which includes funding, academic support and creating spaces of belonging. On the other hand, it is inevitable that as a manifestation of the democratisation of access to higher education, massification cannot be separated from student activism. As Luescher (2016: 34) expounds, the early stages of massification – which aptly describes the current South African higher education context – tend to produce higher levels of student discontent, along with three pressures directly exerted on the student body and its politics: First, the democratic and egalitarian basis for massification tends to bring into sharper focus persisting inequalities in access and success, thus producing more rather than less pressures for further democratisation and social justice. Second, the increasing diversity in the student body comes to reflect social cleavages on campus based on socio-economic backgrounds, such as class, race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, ethnicity, nationality, religion, ideology, and so forth, thus introducing greater dissensus and ‘identity politics’ into student politics and university politics. Third, as higher education as an allocator of life chances becomes increasingly important, the quality of credentials and relevance of qualifications in the labour market also increases. Graduate unemployment may become a serious concern (Luescher, 2016: 34–35).
The call for decolonisation, therefore, has as much to do with a recognition of indigenous epistemologies as it has to do with a recognition and restoration of black lives. These are not new concerns or protests. Also not new are the escalating and disconcerting themes of violence, which have resulted not only in the wanton destruction of university property, but also in violent clashes between students as protesters insist on the cessation of all academic activities. Underlying these violent clashes are simmering residues of oppression, exclusion, abject poverty in a context of increasing unemployment and income inequality – confirming the intricate web between higher education and society. As such, it is necessary to consider student activism beyond university campuses, and in relation to wider societal pressures. There is, however, one distinguishing factor about post-apartheid student activism. The state being protested against is the same one brought into power through student activism – a paradox, which, on the one hand, provides some explanation for students’ unwavering recalcitrance and, on the other hand, begins to provide some insights into the government’s confused inaction.
Reimagining activism as a democratic imperative
If one considers the recent spate of student protests – which started in 2015 – there appears to be a general lack of response that displays an awareness of the significance of these movements for the democratisation of society (Postma, 2016). It is worrying to note that the dominant response from universities to student activism is one of resistance. Instead of creating an inclusive atmosphere, which affirms the necessary participation of students, managerialist responses continue to unfold on a continuum of disregard to increased securitisation of university spaces. At the height of the recent student protests, the institution where I am based responded by implementing highly disturbing securitisation, which saw the deployment of black-clad men not only on campus, but at the entrances to faculties, demanding proof of student and personnel identity cards. In violently restricting students’ rights to demonstrate and, more importantly, by refusing to engage with students as autonomous beings, universities, as well as the government, have created an untenable undermining of democratic governance and deliberation. By employing private security companies to police campuses, universities are effectively criminalising student activism – reminiscent of practices characterised by apartheid.
Students, says Postma (2016), are confronted with a similar forceful and violent resistance from the state – providing some hints as to why, according to Keet et al. (2017), students feel increasingly trapped by smothered activisms in seemingly rights-friendly policy environments. It is unsurprising, therefore, to find that the more interventionist and repressive universities and the government become, the greater the risk of student violence. Moreover, protesting students have withdrawn from the university as a public space for deliberative engagement where their individual rights and collective expressions are supposed to gain prominence and attention (Davids and Waghid, 2020) – thereby bringing into question whether students are capable of advocating for their cause on their own ground.
While it is possible to conceive of student activism in relation only to higher education, it would be risky to discount the role and influences of wider socio-political contexts. On the one hand, the primary dependence of South African universities on state funding means that they cannot but yield to the state’s structural conditions, policies and interventions. Hence, actions and responses by public universities are often shaped and governed by state regulations. On the other hand, as Giroux and Samalavicius (2016) emphasise, it must be made clear to a larger public that higher education is not simply about educating young people to be smart, socially responsible and adequately prepared for whatever notions of the future they can imagine, but that higher education is central to democracy itself. South Africa’s transition from an apartheid to a democratic state meant that the ANC needed to replace its narrative of a politics of struggle with one of reconstruction and restoration. Amidst the euphoria of a successful struggle for liberation, South Africa’s first democratic government (the ANC) is being confronted with increasing tides of discontent, as democracy seemingly fails to deliver on its ideological promise of a better life for all. There are numerous complexities at play here – one of which is the government’s own grappling and inability to deal with oppositional politics. The primary imperative of the ANC was that of opposition and ‘struggle’. That their ‘struggle’ has delivered on a democracy, means – at least to the government – that the ‘struggle’ has ended. When confronted with protesting students, the inaction witnessed in the democratic government seems to emanate from a difficulty to grasp the role of activism, rather than the reasons for the protest.
There appears to be a somewhat mystified tension between, on the one hand, an incapacity, and on the other hand, an unwillingness to engage with opposition as encountered in student activism. This combined impression of an incapacity and unwillingness is increasingly being interpreted by students as a failure by the government to grasp the importance of activism as a necessary imperative of any democracy. Evident from this friction are misunderstandings regarding not only the role of democratic citizens, but also the function of a democracy. Unless students and citizens witness and experience the implicit rights and benefits of a democracy, they cannot know what it means to act democratically. In order for students to know how to be in a democracy, they have to be socialised into such practices. Universities and the state, therefore, have to both represent and defend the ideals of what it means to act democratically. The risks of dismissing or disregarding students’ voices are not limited to their experiences as students. The kinds of citizenship to which students are subjected at a university will shape and define not only their own interpretations of citizenship, but how they engage with a university in that democracy. As such, the role of the university in relation to the cultivation of citizenship should not be undermined. The wider the gaps between student voices and responses to these voices, the greater the points of alienation and, hence, the potential for (dis)engaged practices of antagonism.
University citizenship, assert Keet et al. (2017: 80), is reliant on student interest and participation, which includes transformational and activist dimensions. In this sense, and as Altbach (1992: 1444) observes, ‘student activism is inherent in the nature of the academic community’. Where student activism is traditionally accepted as a legitimate element of the political system, argues Altbach (1991: 250), it is more likely to have an impact on society. Concomitantly, where student activism is viewed as misplaced and illegitimate, society is not only rendered under renewed strain, but the activism easily degenerates into violence and vandalism. To Luescher (2016: 28), the (South) African context of democratisation and higher education massification prompts a new analysis of the contribution of students to the transformation of higher education and society. This new analysis demands a recognition that both higher education spaces and South Africa’s democratic government are becoming increasingly interventionist in how they respond to student activism. Responses to student protests are seemingly driven by reactionary imperatives to suppress and silence, as opposed to a willingness to engage and deliberate – responses which, unless reframed, can only bode poorly for universities and democracy.
Universities and the advocacy of social, economic and ethical reform
Conceptually, and traditionally, advocacy tends to be framed in a discourse of support – as in supporting this or that cause. In recognising that it is not without its power dimensions, Jansson (2010: xvii) defines advocacy as a practice that helps ‘powerless, stigmatized, and oppressed populations improve their wellbeing’. When students advocate for decolonised university spaces, or protest against exorbitant tuition fees, or the increasing scourge of gender-based violence, due consideration needs to be given to the contexts and circumstances that give rise to these calls in the first place. Within these causes there are prevailing elements of stigma and powerlessness, which demand advocacy not only from students, but also from society.
Following the above, advocacy, therefore, would not be considered as out of sync with the imperatives of social justice and the ethics of a democracy. In South Africa, activism is immersed in a politics of struggle and, as such, invites increasing responses of hostility from universities and the state. Jansen (2017), for example, maintains that the kinds of student activism currently encountered will eventually cause South African universities to cease to exist. While many have and will disagree with Jansen, his voice represents a growing trend of disillusionment with students’ voices. Without the contextual baggage of activism, advocacy, therefore, might present a worthwhile reimagining and reconceptualisation not only of what it means to assist the stigmatised and powerless, but what should characterise the position and practices of universities and the state.
Students, as Giroux and Giroux (2004: 86) remind us, ‘represent an important political movement for social change’. This understanding has at least two critical implications for both students and higher education. Firstly, students are not mere recipients of knowledge and skills; they are autonomous agents, who bring their own perspectives and perceptions of the world into a university space. Universities ought to be spaces where they are actively able and encouraged to engage in self-critique and critique of institutional practices. How much they bring of themselves into classrooms, institutional and social spaces depends on how much universities are prepared to teach and act with the intention of openness and liberation, as opposed to compliance and submission. The more closed off university spaces are, the narrower and more limiting the experiences for students.
Secondly, and concomitantly, the more open universities are to dissenting views, the greater the discursive potential for grappling with questions, contestations and controversies. This grappling is not restricted to students; it should be as prevalent among academics and administrators. There should be concern when things remain unchanged in terms of curriculum, academic appointments, research foci, institutional cultures and policies. The very nature and purpose of a university ought to be as much about reason and logic as it is about argumentation and disagreement. As such, a university should want to create a climate of democratic push and pull – where students converge with divergent views, not with the intention of necessarily finding consensus, but with a view of affirming that there are always different experiences, perspectives and advocacies.
In their preoccupation with hierarchical and vertical constructions of knowledge, universities often lose sight of just what valuable resources students actually are. In mistakenly believing that universities are the custodians of knowledge, they neglect to understand that in many instances it is students – with their robust and uninhibited ideas of the world – who, through their questions and resistance, open up renewed considerations of how the world might be otherwise. Students are not only representative of change; they are change – in terms of who they are, how they think and what they bring. Each time a student enters a lecture classroom, or engages in a supervision encounter, the potential for unconsidered ideas is ever-present – if only academics and administrators are open to being challenged and changed. The favour of their youth, in most instances, means that they have not yet been constrained by only seeing the world in terms of dichotomies. Universities are in critical need of this flexibility and openness, so that they (universities) can be reflectively open to the new.
The point being made is that if students are to be conceived as voices and advocates of questions and change, then universities have to cultivate the spaces, systems and policies conducive and hospitable to such voices. The core concern of this article has been that current university responses render student activism as irreconcilable with democratic spaces. Student voices are criminalised and shut down through a response immersed in increased university securitisation, as opposed to a willingness to engage with and listen to students. In light of South Africa’s particular history, and in the interest of establishing, let alone preserving, a democratic culture, it has become necessary for both universities and students to reimagine activism. Universities cannot afford to continue along a trajectory of resistance and securitisation; students cannot afford to continue along a trajectory of violence. Not only are students indeed capable of advocating for their own cause on their own ground, but this advocacy has to place a renewed emphasis on listening. In turn, it is not up to universities to decide whether or not students should be allowed to protest. Students have an implicit legitimacy to speech actions, and universities have a moral responsibility not only to listen to their voice, but to advocate institutional cultures where advocacy (advancing political and social issues) is nurtured.
In the absence of institutional advocacy, students – as is the case in democratic South Africa – will continue to construct themselves as oppositional to, and suspicious of, the university and the state. In other words, it is insufficient to presume that the onset of a democracy has necessarily been absorbed into the institutional workings and policies of universities. In the absence of being seen and listened to, they have no reason to believe in the openness and willingness of universities to engage not only with their advocacy, but with who they are.
A climate of institutional advocacy, as a manifestation of a democratic space, is necessary for a disruption of the historical mistrust which has characterised student protests and activism. Students have to witness and experience that their right to a voice, and their propensity for advocacy are seen as legitimate forms of democratic action; that they have both the right and responsibility to question hegemonies of power. This recognition is as pertinent to the self-interests and self-advocacy of students as it is to student advocacy on behalf of others. Student advocacy is not limited to the self-interests of students – a point often overlooked or undermined by higher education institutions. There are social, economic and ethical consequences and benefits when students protest against exorbitant tuition fees, colonialist and apartheid-infused university spaces, or gender-based violence. These protests provide particular forms of commentary, foregrounding and contestation, which otherwise might not have allowed these issues to emerge. At play here, therefore, are not only matters of free higher education, or decolonised university spaces; at play is the cultivation of active and critical citizenship – citizenship that is as concerned about social and economic reform as it is about ethical reform.
In concluding, the democratisation of (South African) universities is contingent upon the extent to which they are prepared to immerse their academic project within the discourse and imperative of a democracy. The epistemological contribution and purpose of universities centrally includes the types of students and citizens they cultivate. Universities, therefore, can neither distance themselves from their academic projects, nor from their students. If universities understand and accept that they have a social and ethical responsibility to the community and society in which they exist, then it follows that they should be especially concerned about who and what they contribute to the public sphere.
Student advocacy, as an enactment of social, political and ethical agency, therefore, should be recognised as critical to citizenship. Universities should want to facilitate and cultivate forms of citizenship that are unafraid, autonomous and bold. This has as much bearing on creating the spaces to question institutional cultures and practices as it does on any form of social injustice. In the end, therefore, student advocacy is inextricably embedded in what ought to be a foundational premise of any university, and that is academic freedom. Students not only have the right to think and speak their own truth, but they also have the right to learn and study in environments and spaces where these rights are foregrounded as a foundational principle of a university.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
