You can imagine, I had already had my experience at UDW and I wasn't going to shut up. So, I started organising black students in the res and then eventually contested house committee elections. A few of us black students got on to the house committee … it was a split house committee – racially.

#### Experiences with the SASCO branch at Wits, key issues and demands

Naidoo recalls a number of matters in her reflections on the SASCO branch at Wits, starting with the strategies that some comrades used to recruit women into the branch, the way the branch established a reputation for challenging the ANC leadership, and SASCO's call for broad transformation at Wits.

#### *Recruitment strategies*

Naidoo's reflections of her SASCO experience at Wits start with the different ways in which women were being recruited into SASCO in the early years.

At that time, recruitment strategies in SASCO were non-existent. There were too few women in the branches. So, my comrades told me much later on that they would come to the residences at the time of TV news and see how many women were watching the news. That was a recruitment strategy.

Here we were trying to transform society, but amongst ourselves, our own practices, our own forms of relating to each other … speaking about recruitment, many comrades used to be proud of the fact that they recruited female comrades through starting up relationships with them. It was seen as a recruitment strategy and as nothing wrong. We laugh about it now, but those kinds of things happened.

#### *A radical branch, challenging ANC leadership*

The Wits SASCO branch was seen as radical to the extent that it challenged some of the ANC leaders at that time; it was also a branch with close ties to local community organisations. Naidoo recalls:

Wits SASCO branch became notorious over that period from the early 90s to about 1997/98 for questioning the ANC leadership from within. I was in the middle of that and cut my political teeth during that time. The divisions that I had started to see back home started to manifest on a much bigger scale in my university life and the contestation that we now see today, I started to experience then.

But there was also commitment from within SASCO to the idea of student politics that weren't always driven by the Alliance, particularly here. For example, we fought every year about whether there should be the establishment of ANC Youth League branches on campus and in my time that didn't happen. It happened only recently. How we fought about that, whether we were autonomous or not. That is how we were trying to make sense of the matters at that time.

#### *Participation in the National Education Crisis Committee campaign*

From 1993, the SASCO Wits branch was also part of community formations. We always saw ourselves as embedded in broader structures and we used to talk about the MDM, the mass democratic movement. So, the National Education Crisis Committee [NECC] at the time made a call for the occupation of white schools and the SASCO branch at that time undertook a campaign to call for the resignation of all Council members.

We linked our campaign to the NECC campaign and started to talk about what kind of forms this campaign should take in the university context. The vice-chancellor was away and the deputy vice-chancellor, June Sinclair, was put in charge. They started anticipating violent forms of action, but nothing had happened yet. They started mobilising their forces against anticipated action. But to cut a very long story short, after the first mass protest which was just a march on campus, Sinclair called the police on campus for the first time in many years.

*Protest action, ANCYL intervention and SASCO's call for a transformation forum* After challenging the university management and Council on various transformation issues, including the call to dismantle existing governance structures seen as illegitimate, SASCO eventually demanded the establishment of a broad transformation forum at Wits.

Our demands were whittled down to making this demand for broad transformation. In that time, our demonstrations were starting to get uglier and that started to split the movement. I mean its laughable now – after what we've witnessed since 2015 – but at that time what was seen as the most problematic form of action on the part of students was littering campus.

So, Wits started the first 'Operation Litter' and that's when the ANCYL Provincial Committee and National Executive Committee were here in our branch office, scolding us students like high school scholars. And the branch was also split. Our demonstrations started to be related to the broader approaches of the alliance and what was acceptable in the alliance – acceptable forms of action. The branch also started to experience problems, started to fragment, and attendance of meetings started to dwindle.

### *Demand for broad transformation and the establishment of FFACT*

Then the broad transformation demand became central. Over time, Wits established what we can debate was a broad transformation forum or not. And over that time student leaders started to get caught up in, and most of their time started being taken up by, negotiations around the actual character of the forum and there were really some ridiculous discussions.

So, for example, the name of the forum eventually was, because that was fought over, the Forum for Further Accelerated and Comprehensive Transformation [FFACT] because Wits administration wouldn't concede that they had not been committed to transformation in the past. After all, they had fought the apartheid state …

So then, in that time it also became more important within the branch to contest representative structures on campus.

# **Becoming involved in the SRC**

After serving in SASCO and various other student political structures, Naidoo was now set to step up to serve in the SRC. As part of the context of such involvement at the time, it is important to recall that the question of the role of the SRC was one that continued to be debated.

# Deliberations on the role of the SRC and the campus as site of struggle

Naidoo recounts the contestation over whether the SRC is part of the governance structures of the university or more of a student union.

So that also changed over time at Wits: moving from the black students' society to the Students' Representative Council in that moment of the merger between SANSCO and NUSAS. I am speaking about those two because they were dominant at that time. They really pushed and participated. There were always divisions, always debate, always contestation about what the SRC meant or what it would become. I think to the detriment of SASCO, the SRC was seen as another representative space that SASCO could gain another voice through.

# *Advancing the national democratic revolution*

If you also think of my generation coming onto campuses, imagining ourselves as contributing to this mass struggle and seeing campuses as what we used to call 'sites of struggle', we were thinking about how our agenda would enable the university to contribute to the broader transformation of society. If you came from the Congress tradition, it was building non-racialism, non-sexism, democracy, and in this branch, in a few SASCO branches, we used to have the principles of African leadership and working-class leadership and that also related to the theory of the national democratic revolution and so on. So, supposedly representative structures were to further that big agenda.

You also imagined yourself as having the correct line, as having these solutions, having these answers. You were going into the SRC to take forward a predetermined agenda. It was to convince everybody else. At that time, it was a majority of white students.  There was a sense that the SRC was also not taken seriously by white students outside of NUSAS.

So, people used to talk about apathy: people are apathetic, that's why they don't vote. I think that's another discussion to be had in this current day. But, at the time that was it, so you played with the SRC; you played with the processes of the SRC; you didn't necessarily take it very seriously in following the rules and so on. It was your agenda to get your people into that structure so that you can get access to resources and so that you could do the work that's determined in the branch.

*Debating university governance: toward a non-hierarchical system of governance* As time goes by, you get your people on Council and Senate, and involved in what was unfolding in terms of this broader policy agenda and policy transformation agenda. So, that's why it was debated every year. There was also a group within SASCO that thought this policy transformation process was not the way to go: we should be opposing it and we should be insisting on broad transformation forums as they were initially imagined, or we should be contesting structures of governance as they exist completely, down with councils, down with Senate, down with the professors towards a more horizontal, non-hierarchical kind of approach to changing the system.

And you'll recall, the first non-racial SRCs came at the beginning of the 1990s. Prior to that there were black students' societies. So, SASCO came from the merger, and with the principle of non-racialism came the prioritisation of SRCs. At its Wits branch that was the debate every single year. There were some who were committed to the idea of SRC as a student representative structure. It made a difference whether you came from NUSAS and that tradition, that you fought in different ways from the majority of black student leaders and activists who saw the SRC as a means through which we could get another voice on the campus.

SASCO was still recognised and we fought very hard for SASCO to be considered as a separate entity in FFACT. So, there was always a debate on how we contest SRC elections … the imagination of this 'new student' and so on. It was funny, because there was some kind of imagination that you must choose those who are popular, those who hung out at parties, those who would be able to speak to a broader mass to contest elections.

I had been on a house committee and all of that, so I knew a lot of people on campus and so on. So, I got forwarded by SASCO to contest SRC elections, but there was at this time this contested sense of the SRC.

#### Election into the SRC

In 1995, Naidoo was elected onto the Wits SRC for 1996. Elections happened at the end of 1995, and leaders' terms of office ran from the end of 1995 to the end of 1996.

I got elected as vice-president internal, which meant I had to take responsibility for FFACT. Here it became the matter of debating Council and who would sit on Council. So, for years it was how many representatives from each stakeholder should there be on Council, and so you'd get bogged down in those kinds of discussions – ridiculous debates – because sitting on those forums were also people like Charles van Onselen, who at the time formed part of a group of 13 academics who were challenging change, the need for change on campus. So, for example, he would bring in the race–class debate and then keep us occupied with that for sessions and sessions.

#### Support and training for SRC members

Naidoo reflects on her preparedness and training and the level of support they had during their term of office in the SRC.

There was no support – like I said. I was shivering when I had to go and speak on the report of the National Commission on Higher Education with Jairam Reddy [who had been the vice-chancellor of UDW from 1990 to 1994 and was the chairperson of the National Commission on Higher Education]. I think I didn't sleep that night before, reading the entire document. You got to think on your feet, and we relied on certain comrades. Like I said you get taken under the wing of some senior person and you are young and fearless, and you have these big ideas which make you act in certain ways but then you can't deal with the consequences and what comes after.

So, no, there was no real support but there were some attempts from Wits. For example, at Wits the dean of students at that time was Ron Carter, who had come from Boston University in the US, got together resources and made connections with the United States Information Service and USAID. And Elaine Sacco and them were the student drivers of this.

When I came into SAU-SRC [South African Universities Students' Representative Council] there was something called the National Centre for Student Leadership and Development that was housed here in Ron Carter's office and operated from here. He got all of us student leaders onto a committee that used to meet quite regularly with people from USAID. It was SAU-SRC, PASMA, Ignatius Molapo at that time, AZASCO, SASCO, all student leaders. And they used to give us resources and organise for us to run these training sessions across Johannesburg for SRC leaders. But, we did not have much training ourselves, and then it collapsed in that time.

Ron Carter was problematised here at Wits. To cut a long story short, they organised a trip, the first real training trip for all of us to the US. It must have been 1995 or 1996. And we were taken to mainly private colleges, African-American, along the East Coast of the States, so Morehouse College, Spellman College and then eventually we got to Howard. So, it was a slightly different experience for us.

The training started with us being asked to role-play engaging with our vice-chancellors. You can imagine, we are coming from these crisis-ridden institutions and we are told 'to make ourselves available' and 'hold our vicechancellors' hands'. So it was that kind of thing. By the middle of it we were just completely disappointed and alienated and I decided to leave the group. I was the only woman in the group and it was made out that, 'She is leaving because she is a woman and she is not dealing with stuff.' But I left; I refused to continue. I asked an activist in New York to hook me up with people and I ended up staying in Harlem and I got much nicer training from an older woman activist and academic, living with her and meeting other people. But, yes, that was the only real kind of training.

# **Student representation in university governance**

Naidoo's time in the SRC was the period when black student activists not only debated new ways students should be involved in governance but also eventually entered various committees within the university for the first time.

It was in my SRC's time that the discussions and debates started happening about whether we sit on Council or not. And there was actually a debate about it because some people felt that we were becoming part of the university management and we will be making decisions about other students, not just representing students.

But, I think there was also a debate that got lost in the time of transformation because there was this idea that the Broad Transformation Forum would replace the Council. Instead, these forums became the spaces in which we discussed transformation of existing structures of governance. So, the whole critique that was there from the early 90s about existing structures of governance got lost.

I didn't follow this process, but I think there is still a university transformation forum but it's toothless.38 No one hears about it. I don't know what they discuss.

#### *'The student voice has been heard' – not*

The experience of student representation in the committees turned out to be frustrating.

From about '95, '96, you got, I think, two representatives to Council, two representatives to Senate. I think I actually sat on it but I hated those discussions and I dropped out of them. I remember we receive these thick documents with pink, green and yellow pages [the agendas].

Look, we tried, we would put things on the agenda, and I can remember one of the senior professors saying that, it was in a debate on fees, he said, 'your voices have been heard and you have been consulted'. And I said to him, but consultations don't just legitimise a process.

It means if you were heard you must have some impact on the process. I think we got disillusioned in that time because we were being frustrated by buying into a process and then not having our grievances addressed in ways that we thought were acceptable. So, there was this thing at the time: you will never win anything at the table that you can't win on the streets.

# **Internal organisation, communication and changing ways of mobilising**

As a student representative structure there is an indispensable obligation for student leaders to be well informed of the needs, demands and issues experienced by the student body. During their time, Naidoo and other student leaders employed various means to communicate with the student body and student structures. At the same time, there was also the rise of a new character of student leaders.

#### SRC, residence councils and faculty councils

There were debates and engagement with the general student body using various platforms of engagement.

The mass meetings and so on seldom happened unless there was a crisis. The All Residence Council and the SRC had a much closer relationship at

38 With the HE Act of 1997, the university transformation forums that had been established on some campuses became formalised in the Institutional Forum as a statutory advisory body to Council.

the time. You can imagine, the All Residence Council and the Students' Representative Council had that close relationship because of the growing accommodation crisis. Also, members of the All Residence Council tended to be far more active and politically engaged. They would also see themselves as holding the SRC to account.

Then the faculty councils, there were very few engagements between SRC and faculty councils. I think that faculty councils have only very recently started being taken seriously by students.

# Communication spaces of engagement then and again during #FeesMustFall

There was a SASCO newspaper that used to be produced in the 1990s called *Mamela*. There were many spaces for debate, spaces for students to actually critically engage each other about issues.

I think social media has given the current political space a different character and we have seen its successes in terms of hashtags and so on. But I think there's also more space for engagement with that form of interaction. Face-to-face engagement isn't that necessary and that has many effects.

There's on the one hand the rise of a kind of celebrity student leader. Then on the other, you have this faceless engagement when bigger numbers of people access information not necessarily because they are members of a group, party or whatever, but because they are connected to a particular issue.

We saw #FeesMustFall here at Wits brought together a range of students, many who had never been involved politically before and came together around #FeesMustFall. They didn't gather because SASCO had put out pamphlets or made a call. Some of them didn't even know about SASCO and for many weeks there was some kind of general assembly in Solomon House where any student could speak.

For a time we saw some of those old traditions, old ways of speaking. I think that also then allowed for women to come together and say, 'You know what, we have been silent, we don't represent ourselves in these platforms and we don't speak in this kind of language, your forms of organising are masculinist.'

Not to romanticise that, but I think there was a time that started to happen but then that space itself started to close because the older traditions started to become more dominant. We don't also have an imagination beyond party politics. So, people withdrew into the party-political formations. Those students who didn't want to get involved in parties kind of withdrew into their own little spaces; they formed for the first time ever at Wits a branch of the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania [PASMA]. It's never been there before. There was AZASCO at Wits but not a PASMA branch and AZASCO was a very small number of people.

#### From mass mobilisation to factionalism

At the time in which I was also involved, mass mobilisation started to fade. When I came to campus, like I said, it felt like an active branch. How organising happened then was through regular meetings of SASCO members at residences. At medical school there was a local meeting and regular branch meetings in addition to the branch executive committee meetings, and those mass meetings were really vibrant because they didn't just deal with the dayto-day organisational stuff but real questions.

I remember debating the sunset clauses for example. That document was very real for us, and we were imagining ourselves as actually contributing to the debates. Then our leadership would go participate in the provincial, national debates and discussions, and of course, because it was such a contested space and it came with access to resources, it was significant if you were to get on the SRC and so on.

The branch became notorious for cabals and cliques. So, people were aligned to different traditions within the Alliance, setting up little groups and so on. I think that killed the movement over time.

Then, communicating with the general body of students used to happen through what was called the General Student Council, and that used to happen regularly and so I can't remember how often but it was the SRC's duty to call that General Student Council.

In crisis, if there were crises – and we had many crises in the 90s – generally that's when the general student body would come and debate things, and it was the same at the University of Durban-Westville. I can remember the main hall being packed around 1991 … even Chris Hani's death … it was, like, how we were mobilising. Those kinds of events, major issues and so on.

That started to change over time, I would argue, partly because of factionalism and also because of the change in political space and the introduction of 'broad transformation', the move away from protest to policy formulation … because, what started to happen here was that the branch became divided between leaders and the rest. Your leaders would be occupied by these protracted negotiations, which hardly any of them were interested in and mass participation dwindled.

#### The Boom Shaka generation and the SRC

I spoke about my generation on the SRC and there was contestation and so on, and I have also spoken about how over that period during which policy formulation started to be prioritised, there was a decline in mass protests. But I think at that time, SASCO leadership also started to see the importance of the SRC no matter how contested it was because it was being given more priority by university management than the individual political organisations.

I think there was a paper written about 'the new student' in SASCO and how this Model C – I hate to use this term but – the 'coconut', needed to be approached and how that group needed to be brought into politics.

So you needed music and sport and parties. SRC needed to play that role in bringing these 'new students' into the political space. So, the SRC started to be characterised as partying … But, at the same time you did have this idea at SASCO that you needed activists to be sent to the SRC who understood that the university still needed to be transformed, that you still needed to factor in things like fees, exclusions and so on.

# **Graduating into national student leadership structures**

After Naidoo got onto the SRC of Wits, she was elected onto the SAU-SRC NEC which then exposed her to a host of national student issues and gave her access to various platforms. The South African Universities Students' Representative Council (SAU-SRC) was the national body which brought all SRCs together.

I got forwarded by SASCO to the Wits SRC and things were also happening nationally. Elaine Sacco [from UCT] was the first president of the South African Universities Students' Representative Council, now South African Union of Students [SAUS]. I got elected after her.

Naidoo served two terms as SAU-SRC president in 1996 and 1997.

# The National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE] and free education

During that time, SAU-SRC often made what were considered to be more radical demands than SASCO, and tensions were high both at campus level and at national level as students voiced their demands.

At the same time as we were contributing to debates related to the NCHE, a new macro-economic policy was being introduced, GEAR [the Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy, critiqued by many for being neoliberal in its approach and introduced by the ANC government in 1996]. So, we started from within the Alliance formations arguing against GEAR and against its impact on the transformation process in higher education.

But, in that time, interestingly enough, SAU-SRC became more radical than the SASCO NEC. It was partly because a few of us were from Wits and those from Gauteng were challenging it from within. I started getting disciplined by the SASCO NEC as someone seconded to SAU-SRC for participating in this national debate. You must remember, things really got hectic at national level in 1996, 1997, around GEAR, around the Commission on Higher Education, and around what was happening on individual campuses, particularly around fees.

I remember the first march for free education started at Wits and was going to Stanley Avenue where the National Development Agency offices were to demand bursaries, and following that came TEFSA [Tertiary Education Fund for South Africa] and following that came NSFAS [National Student Financial Aid Scheme] and student leaders were also drawn into that process; first starting to insist on bursaries and then slowly moving into the loan scheme.

#### Reprimanded by Mandela

The radical approach towards addressing student issues adopted by SAU-SRC did not go unnoticed and didn't settle well with the higher structures of the ANC and the ANC government.

The last part of this picture was the kind of discipline that I spoke about coming from higher structures in the ANC. I think it was in 1995 that Nelson Mandela summoned all student leaders to the Union Buildings and he met the SASCO leadership, SAU-SRC and SATSU [South African Technikon Students' Union] at that time and I remember sitting around this long table and he sat at the head.

He just lectured us for like 45 minutes about the need for us to be more disciplined on campuses in that kind of fatherly reprimanding voice: 'I will bring my army and police onto your campuses if you do not stop with this nonsense. Just tell me what you want, I will go to Anglo American, I will go and get the money for you. It's too premature to be talking about deracialising campuses like the University of the Western Cape.   That was his line. 'Leave it to us to do the other work.'

I can remember getting five minutes at the end to respond.  I was very apologetic but saying we still must fight on … And at the end of it, all of us lined up for his signature.

#### Another Mandela story

I will give you another story, '93 or '94. So, at the time I think we were young, and seen to be young, and Wits was at the heart of capital. Mandela was addressing businesspeople in Johannesburg and we were protesting at the time, and he said, 'No, he will deal with the students, and students must just behave.' And we came out as a branch with a pamphlet with the title 'Mandela Messianism and the Media' and you can imagine what happened.

So, you get ANC province, ANC national, at the height of the protests here, when 'Operation Litter' started, I think, Cheryl Carolus and Walter Sisulu were deployed here to calm things down. So, you would be summoned by people within the ANC at various times, but I think when Mandela intervened it was also then at a national level that the policy agenda of the ANC in government was starting to be challenged. So, it wasn't just about institutional protests.

# **Reflecting on #FeesMustFall**

For Naidoo, #FeesMustFall opened a new chapter in student activism and a new hope in the struggle to confront neoliberalism and its impact in society. Being a Wits insider, Naidoo recalls the October 6 anti-outsourcing protest as part of the lead-up to 2015 #FeesMustFall and the first occupation of Solomon House. She reflects on her experience, partisanship, and the new forms of protest that surfaced during the momentous #FeesMustFall protests at Wits.

# From #October6 to #FeesMustFall

One of the ongoing debates which re-emerged prior to and during #FeesMustFall was the issue of outsourced university workers. Meetings amongst workers, students and academics in small groupings were taking place at Wits, which led to what became known as the '#October6 protest' that took place a week before #FeesMustFall.

Prior to #FeesMustFall, a few of us started meeting, initially to see how we could link worker, academic and student struggles, and link up to what was happening at the time around the idea of a United Front. We had our own differences but we agreed, let's prioritise one issue. So we started organising for a demonstration on campus against outsourcing on the 6th of October 2015 and then we became known as #October6. So … exactly a week before #FeesMustFall broke out, was the October 6 demonstration against outsourcing.

That saw a few of the students getting involved in a shutdown, shutting down The Matrix on October 6, which is where all the shops are at Wits, to enable outsourced workers to join the protest. That was a non-partisan protest. It brought together SASCO, EFF, independent students who didn't want to join a party, and that's also increasingly becoming and became quite evident in #FeesMustFall. We were questioning party politics, questioning the party model; we wanted something different.

From the #October6 group came the slogan 'Towards a public African decolonised university' and the discussions around decolonisation included structures of governance and the need to imagine a very different system of working together that doesn't reproduce hierarchies.

I am still on the WhatsApp group and demonstrations are still possible. They keep on saying, 'Let's revive #October6' but we thought about hosting a long series of discussions and debates and seminars that would confront these questions, because we were also saying, we don't have models any more. We are not coming with predetermined solutions any more. Many of us had been defeated around those.

Those issues are still there, and in the 2015 moment in a very new way, through the discourse of decolonisation, black students and African students in particular, bringing together all those demands around curriculum transformation, language, outsourcing and bringing together fees and free education, and bringing together worker and student issues, and then also seeing themselves once again as part of a community being in the university. That moment was really interesting, exciting, but also sometimes a bit scary, because no one knew what was happening.

I was on sabbatical and my partner teaches in politics and I just came to fetch him, and we ended up camping here for the next three days. Also, student leaders were not expecting this, you speak to Shaeera and others who led, they will tell you that they would have been happy to have had 200 students on the day. They were not anticipating this.

# Experience on the ground during #FeesMustFall and the prevailing campus issues

No one had anticipated that the #FeesMustFall campaign at Wits would become a movement and attract so much attention. Many issues that came with such a massive protest wave had to be addressed on the go. They ranged from daily logistics and catering for students in Solomon House to the political differences that surfaced again and again, and the common ground found in a new discourse centring the notion of decolonisation and new ways of seeing each other. Naidoo recalls the first days of occupation:

Food, toilets, basic things – you started being called by students who had a relationship with a few of us.

Also, in that time, I spoke about this open space that had been created. But even on the first night, EFF and SASCO protested in circles next to each other, singing the same songs but refusing to engage with each other.

And you were also dealing with that kind of thing on the night that Adam Habib [the vice-chancellor of Wits] was held here in Solomon House.

It was actually crazy to witness what was going on between different student factions because there was no sense of how we were going to get out of this. Yes, we have our demands, but how do we move beyond this particular moment. So, that entire night there were people going around different groups of students trying to bring them together to some kind of consensus that eventually ended up being the statement that was signed.

The issues are still there. They have taken centre stage in a very different way and there is a new discourse that has emerged that has allowed for that newness: decolonisation.

 It's not comrade any more. It's about how we are seen in this space, how we feel in this space, how are we able to be, and how are we able to become, and that comes from many different individual experiences and groups, and encounters with knowledge itself. Biko became prominent on campus, graffiti and slogans; Robert Sobukwe; the renaming of these buildings.

# The birth of the new movement and the aesthetic of protests during #FeesMustFall

Naidoo reflects on the intellectual work, the political imagination and creativity that went with the protest movement. There was a revival of former struggle icons and graffiti and artistic performances became an impactful form of protest.

It started on October 6 first and then it just grew and grew. In the months before there was also a group called Black Thought. When you walk around you will sometimes see the Black Thought graffiti, things like that.

Solomon Mahlangu is a very interesting example. You can't explain how a Congress icon suddenly becomes a figure for an entire movement of a generation that didn't grow up under apartheid, that has no real concrete relationship to this history, for many of the students who were not involved in a Congress formation or any political formations.

The majority of them who came together in Solomon House would not have been part of any political formation. If you walk around campus, you will see the Solomon Mahlangu signs. On the day we came back from the mass protest by the Union Buildings, Solomon Mahlangu's image was there and you just saw the 'Project Hoopoe' logo below it – I don't know who they are, where they come from, but they also made a significant impact – they linked Marikana to the Wits struggle in some of their stickers. There is now only a trace of the image that remains after the university management tried to have it erased.

In addition to the graffiti, there were lots of kinds of artistic performance. For example, when the private security was brought on campus the entire Great Hall was fenced off. Arts students brought together other students and put on a performance where there were banners linking up all the different struggles, from Andries Tatane to Marikana, and then a group of them painted themselves with fake blood. They just stood in front of the Great Hall and then workers and other students joined in and there was toyi-toyiing. The fence was demolished and that made an open space to get people to pass through security … and then giving private security flowers.

In her reflections on #October6 and #FeesMustFall, Naidoo could not hide her pride in the new crop of student leaders that it brought to the fore and her cautious hope that 20 years after her own experience in student leadership, the stalled transformation project may regain some momentum.

# **Changing the world as a scholar activist**

Naidoo came into student politics from a family background of anti-apartheid and liberation politics, steeped in the Congress tradition. After completing her studies at Wits, she continued her activism including by helping found and organise the Anti-Privatisation Forum in Johannesburg. She explains how she sees herself today, having returned to Wits in 2008 as an academic in the Department of Sociology.

# From student leader to full-time community activism

I graduated here with my undergrad. I had the possibility to stay on but decided not to and went to work in movements. I worked at Khanya College and did contract research and so on, and started connecting up with the unions and community organisations. Then, in 2000 Wits introduced its first plans for neoliberal policies and some of us started to protest against those and then Wits SASCO branch got divided over that. Academics, workers and students came together at Wits, at the same time the city was introducing 'iGoli 2002' which was its first set of neoliberal policies and so we got together with other activists in the city and started demonstrating against conference here called 'Urban Futures' which was showcasing these policies and in those struggles the Anti-Privatisation Forum [APF] was born.

So, I threw myself into the Anti-Privatisation Forum between 2000 and 2006. If you look at the initial makeup of the APF, one of the first chairpersons of the APF was from SASCO, but over time certain activists withdrew. COSATU and so on withdrew. I remained active there and kept the link with outsourced workers and activists on the campus. I was also relating to other activists in SASCO at Wits who started to go through some of the experiences I had had in relation to taking on some policies of the alliance and being constrained by the transformation process.

And then in 2008 I took a contract job here as an associate lecturer in sociology and I really felt at that moment completely defeated, I mean like I am not giving you the whole story … the APF does not exist any more. For a whole lot of reasons it declined, and I withdrew feeling completely defeated and said okay I am heading back to my studies and went into a master's programme at UKZN, but my research was here in Orange Farm. So, I was struggling for library access in the first year and application for the job was one way to get library access and I got back into the space.

# Returning to Wits and continuing to work with student activists

On describing herself based on the roles and various hats she has worn in her journey, Naidoo states that she would like to be called a 'scholar activist', as she continues with her recount of her life back at Wits, connecting the impact of her student leadership, her community activism, her scholarly work and the #FeesMustFall movement.

The value of being back here, and over time was just to have student activists coming over and knocking at my door because of what I was teaching in the classroom, this seemed huge. After a little while, well, this is a little space: you get to know who's here and who's there. So, people like Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, the EFF spokesperson, came to me as a struggling activist from SASCO, you know; he's been threatened with expulsion and so on. How does he deal with this, so those kinds of engagement … Vuyani Pambo, so those kinds of people … some ended up leading #FeesMustFall. So, I started having those kinds of engagement, started reconnecting with people, with the solidarity committee that was taking up the questions of outsourcing. All those issues that I felt defeated around, people were still taking up in very small groups and they were often not having a lot of success.

#### Confronting oneself as academic and activist in #FeesMustFall

It is definitely a significant moment that shaped my life overall, because it's in that moment where I had really to confront who I was, who I wanted to be, who I could be, and how I could answer that question that I came to university with, which was, 'How do I contribute to effecting change in the world?'

Knowledge itself and knowledge production I started to see as very important and central in that idea of changing the world. I never imagined myself as an academic because 'academic' was a swear word in my house and in the movement.

The first time I was ever made to confront that I am an academic was in the #FeesMustFall protest because students identified me as an academic. There were few who knew me and knew where I came from. In such a mass of students you are an academic, the enemy. So, yes, it became very real in a different sense which made me confront who I am. I have been really lucky, I think, to have had the experience of 10 years teaching in the social sciences and humanities. I didn't ever imagine myself as applying for this kind of job and to be in this space. The Society, Work and Politics Institute is one of the Wits research institutes that has been able to sustain itself in the space of the university whilst continuing to do more activist work. So, yes, I still struggle with that title of academic.

#### Scholarly activism and the classroom

How one imagines oneself in the world also changes in different forms of interactions and engagements. I gain the most from being challenged in the classroom about what I am presenting. I am lucky to teach the sociology of work and theory around that and then social movements and collective action, and sociological theory.

The race–class debate, gender, feminist thought, student movements, the new social movements, these have been the kind of issues I have interacted around – with this generation that has not grown up under apartheid. Many of them not coming with the kind of baggage that most of us carry having grown up in that period and many of them not coming with the knowledge that is produced within political parties and political formations, means that they have a much broader set of understandings of the world that they then want to bring into the classroom and then speak to the theory or make the theory speak to their experience. That opens up a very different set of conversations.

# **The future of representative politics: what is the alternative?**

I think the moment is now (it might even be too late) to be confronting the challenge of representative politics because I think a lot of our students are struggling with what might come after or what's the alternative. Voting or not voting today, as it applies to SRC elections as well as national elections, is not necessarily apathy. It's about questioning the very political system itself … and then there is withdrawal because there is no alternative space to actually confront the questions.

# **chapter 4**

# **Jerome September**

University of Cape Town, SRC media officer 1997/98, SRC Chair: Student Life 1998/99, SRC president 1999

*Thierry M. Luescher & Jerome September*

# **Brief biography**

Jerome September is the dean of Student Affairs at the University of the Witwatersrand. He was previously head of Student Affairs at Sol Plaatje University (SPU), Kimberley. Before that he served for more than a decade in different positions at the University of Cape Town (UCT), including as manager for Student Governance and Leadership from 2005 to 2012. In 2012, September became the youth development connector at Citizens Movement in Cape Town. He returned to UCT in 2014 and worked as special projects advisor to the director of the International Academic Programmes Office until 2015. September holds a BA in political studies and a MPhil in human rights from UCT. He is currently pursuing a DBA at the University of Bath in the UK.

This chapter is based on an interview conducted by Thierry Luescher on 15 August 2018.

# **Early influences**

Jerome September traces the early influences on his motivation to become involved in the SRC of UCT to his upbringing during apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, the transition to democracy in the early 1990s, and his awareness of the injustices in the country, which he gained from teachers during his schooling years who covered an informal curriculum on South Africa's struggle history.

My political socialisation was influenced by the fact that I grew up under apartheid South Africa on a farm in the Western Cape. At my school there was quite a bit of awareness about what was happening in the country, both in primary and high school, and also the student movement at the time. I wasn't one of the leaders; I was more a participant, mainly in informally organised marches.

There was a big sense around the injustices in the country. The teachers would cover an informal curriculum. So in history you would do the formal curriculum, which you were required to do, but at the same time teachers would also, quite in-depth on the side, speak about apartheid, the history, the struggle, and so on, so to get students involved.

When Mandela was released, I was in standard 8, about 16. And so it was really that transitional period. By the time I matriculated in 1992, the changes had already begun to take place.

After matric, I didn't go straight to university; I went to work. By the time I arrived at university, I was one of the older students. I guess your school results and academic performance alone isn't enough for you to access opportunities. In my case a lack of information, a lack of proper guidance, meant that I had the matric results but I had not applied extensively for funding and those sorts of sources of support. So I worked for two years and then went to university.

# **Context of getting involved at UCT**

### Disorientation and alienation

Coming from rural Western Cape and being slightly older than the average firstyear student, September found the UCT student culture of the mid-1990s both disorienting and alienating.

Arriving at UCT in 1995, it was a very white university. I stayed in College House, which was a very typical boys' res, with kids who typically came from boarding schools, who had particular ways of being and there were sets of tradition. I was taken to varsity by a family friend.  That was my introduction to residence life at UCT …

And, there was a streaking tradition at College House.  You shout at the police until they chase you and yah, the aim is not to get caught. It didn't make sense to me and I didn't participate.

There was also like the drinking thing during orientation, where you have to go into the pub and just drink yourself motherless. And it just didn't make sense to me and I didn't drink; I was quite a strong Christian. But, if you don't do this you will not be one of the boys … for me it was always like: well whatever, I'm turning 21, I am not going to participate in this; it just didn't make sense to me.

It was a very foreign world, a very alien world.

It was that stuff, but it was also more subtle things: behaviours in the dining halls; what is appropriate and what is expected of you; a certain way in which UCT students behave; certain things that UCT students embrace.

For example, I was lucky I guess not to have to do the English for academic purposes course. There was a case at some point where you had to write to show that your English was up to standard and I wrote it and passed. So, I didn't have to do the course. But there was quite a stigma around that, it was seen as 'English for African people' and that's how people used to joke around those things.

#### Confronting your prejudices

Not all culture shock experiences of coming to university were necessarily bad, however. September recalls how his prejudices were challenged by the diverse student community he encountered at UCT.

The other shocker of course was also coming from the particular background that I was coming from and an education system that almost demonised the rest of the continent; it was such a culture shock to arrive at university and in College House that my room-mate is a white guy, and in the corridor, there are loads of Zimbabweans and Kenyans; people from all over the world but also other black people from South Africa. And suddenly you are confronted with your own prejudices against other people: the idea that beyond the Limpopo everything was 'just dark' and there was nothing there to aspire to or to look forward to' was really being challenged.

And suddenly here are black African, Zimbabweans, that firstly, speak much better English than you, and secondly are top performers throughout that year across the university. And just the way that played with your mind because suddenly everything that you believed up to that point is being challenged.

At the same time being confronted for the first time in your life with white people that are actually pretty mediocre … There is actually nothing special about them. When having grown up on a farm where whiteness was so revered … the white farmer … his kids … the way it was indoctrinated to you. And here you arrive at UCT and in some instances you get better marks than they do: they're actually just human; there's actually nothing that's special about them. That stuff start that you suddenly confront in your first year. And here, I'm already 20 turning 21 and it's at this point only where I'm confronted with that stuff …

Although during the orientation social diversity programme I didn't have a clue as to what prejudice meant. I went through a whole diversity workshop with no clue as to what they were talking about. It was only after the first or second workshop during orientation on the social diversity thing that I went to the bookstore to go and buy an English–Afrikaans dictionary and looked up the word 'prejudice'. And it was only then that I discovered: oh, it's *vooroordeel,* right, so that's what they were talking about.

So, it was also layers of assumptions being made that the language that was being used in the space, that it was accessible and that we all understood, so of course later on that you also want to address.

#### The importance of role models and friendships

Seeing positive role models in the context of feeling disoriented and alienated, three issues stand out in September's reflections on how he became involved:

Firstly, the orientation leaders: the way they carried themselves, the way they were presented, that was something to aspire to. They were the cool kids, who were confident, who spoke well, who didn't seem to have all these barriers, the racial stuff, the gender stuff. These were the in-kids …

And then sitting in Jameson Hall, which is now Sarah Baartman Hall, and being welcomed by the vice-chancellor, Dr Stuart Saunders,39 and SRC president Maxwell Fuzane. I can't remember what Maxwell said but I can remember just being so inspired, being so in awe of this student who is the president, who is now speaking and who seems to have it all together: I was thinking maybe one day I could be doing this.

And the third big influence for me was UCT Radio. UCT Radio was part of the orientation on the Plaza, and I was being inspired by this confident young woman, Natalie, who seems to just own and hold this space.

So those were matters that just ended up staying with me: the orientation leaders being very confident and very articulate and young leaders who made me feel so welcome and inspired.

Upon reflection, I am glad that I wasn't the impressionable 18 year old straight from school in my first year, going to the university. I think I may have been open to a lot of stuff that I maybe would not have been ready for. So, I was very appreciative of the fact that I had worked before coming to university and that I had some experience. And because of that I then also challenged myself to try and make my friendship groupings as diverse as possible, and those were often difficult, and they were often different pockets

39 On Dr Stuart Saunders' reflections on university leadership, see his chapter in: Council on Higher Education (CHE) (2016). *Reflections of South African University Leaders, 1981 to 2014.* Cape Town: African Minds and Pretoria: CHE.

of friends. So, at res, I had a lot of white friends; on campus itself I would often sit or be with a lot of coloured friends and that was often mixed with African friends, and they became more and more all the time.

# **Becoming involved in the SRC**

Having arrived at UCT in 1995 for his first year, and becoming an orientation leader in his second year at varsity, September decided to run for the SRC and did his first term as SRC media officer in 1997/98.

So, two years after arriving at UCT I ended up running for the SRC. My university involvement had not strictly been in student party politics. I was involved through the orientation route: I was an orientation leader and was trained to welcome new students. I also got involved in some religious societies and I had some involvement in student political organisations, but not so much on campus. What happened was in fact that I had run for the College residence house committee, but I wasn't elected. I then still wanted to make a contribution and decided to run for the SRC.

A big influence on this was also my interpretation of the context. A great influence was Dr Mamphela Ramphele who was vice-chancellor.40 It wasn't because I necessarily agreed with her politically, but it was this confident black woman who is seen to be in charge, which was also inspiring.

In 1997 I was elected as the SRC media officer. It was great; a fantastic experience. And in 1998 I ran again and in my second term I was originally elected as SRC president, but in the process of SRC portfolio allocations one group objected and walked out of the portfolio allocation. Student Affairs then investigated and said the process had to be redone. So, we then redid the process and another student won the presidency. So, I then became Chair: Transformation. When the SRC president was academically excluded at the beginning of the following year, at the beginning of 1999, I ended up being elected by the SRC as the new SRC president for the remainder of that year.

### SRC elections

When September ran for the SRC, it was only the third time that he was involved in an election process: he had voted for the first time in 1994 in the first democratic national election, and then in 1996 in the UCT SRC election. He recounts the different experiences as follows:

40 Dr Mamphela Ramphele became the vice-chancellor of UCT in 1996. She was the first black female university vice-chancellor in South Africa.

The SRC election process of 1997 was important for me in several ways. Just two years before, in 1995, UCT didn't get the minimum poll for the SRC election and a transitional student council was put in place by the student parliament. I was one of those students who didn't vote in 1995. The following year I participated when Mzukisi Qobo became the SRC president. Mzukisi came from College House which was where I was staying. But I never went to the SRC question and answer sessions.

The following year in 1997, I'm now a candidate. So, of course now I am required to be campaigning and participating in SRC Q&A sessions, but I didn't know really what to expect because I hadn't gone before! So, I think the way it was done was important. It was quite an eye-opening experience in that for the first time I was really exposed to some of the issues that students were going through and that were being raised.

I also liked the fact that there was strong control around the campaigning and electoral process. You have your manifesto; you could do a party; candidates were formally presented to the electorate by the elections committee; and to an extent there was a layer of equalising the playing fields.

Previously, my most incisive experience had been the 1994 national election. But remember, then I was on a farm and on the farm, there were no real party-political activities. You relied on what you got from the TV or the radio and what you got from newspapers. No parties came to campaign – except there was one night when we were taken to go and listen to the National Party because the farmer decided that we must go and listen to … But that was it … and often on the farm you couldn't talk about being pro-ANC or being pro-anyone but the National Party. And so you spoke about that stuff still in almost hushed tones.

Even going to vote, you're put on the back of a truck to a voting station on another farm where a farmer's daughter or wife or whoever actually were the electoral staff.  So, for me to this day the idea of my vote being a secret is an important part of who I am. It's a secret and I'm not gonna tell.

So even the UCT SRC election it was a proper election; it was serious. I never doubted the integrity of the electoral system, I never doubted the integrity of the process. I never felt that the election was being rigged; that a party was being favoured or anything. Even though I immediately realised that if you ran under a party banner, you had more chances.

My doubts came when I was now a candidate for the presidency and one group walks out after a voting took place. There was now an investigation but I can't recall whether we were actually ever presented with an actual report that said what went wrong.

The SRC election campaigns were also important in a different way for September. They contributed to his awareness of the issues affecting a diverse range of students on campus.

I think it was actually the electoral process that opened my eyes to a lot of the stuff that was actually happening on campus. So, I think to an extent I was a typical, almost apathetic, student up until that point. Certainly, I was involved, but wasn't involved in the campus politics, to put it like that, or student politics.

# SRC internal organisation

An important difference between the way SRCs were constituted in the 1990s and early 2000s and now was the provision for sabbatical officers. September also recalls the importance of student parliament during his two terms and particularly when at the end of 1998 the SRC president was academically excluded. Finally, it is the relationship he built over the two years with the Student Affairs department that eventually impacted greatly on his future professional biography.

# *Sabbatical officers*

September recounts how four SRC members who were full-time student leaders and as such on a 'sabbatical' did not have to do any academic work for the duration of their SRC term.

In my second term as SRC member 1998/99 I had been elected as a sabbatical officer. That is a student leader who suspends their studies for the period of their student leadership at the SRC level.  This was reserved for the SRC president, Chair: Academics, Chair: Transformation, and Chair: Student Life. Those were the four portfolios that were full-time.

So, if you ran for those portfolios and you had to indicate that during the election. If you ran for those portfolios then you had to take a sabbatical. And for the year, you got a stipend. I can't remember how much it was, but it was enough to take care of your basic expenses for that year, and you paid your residence from that.

# *Student parliament and the relationship with the student body*

The relationship between an SRC and the student body is typically maintained throughout the year in various ways. Prior to 1995, the SRC at UCT would hold regular referenda and mass meetings to consult the general student body on various matters. With the 1995 SRC constitution, a student parliament came to serve the function of advising the SRC and holding it accountable.

By the time I came into the SRC, there was already a student parliament, which in fact was the highest decision-making structure. So, the parliament had to endorse the portfolios allocated by the SRC. So when there was the fight over the presidency in 1999, with the SRC president having been academically excluded at the end of 1998, it was because I had quite strong support in the student parliament that at the end of the day I ended up winning the SRC presidency.

And so one tried to maintain that relationship, firstly with the student parliament, but then secondly also with key constituencies in the student body: it was important to have residences on our side, RAG, and others, because they were quite influential.

To gauge the student interest, we often relied on what came either from a direct structure or what came through the student parliament – and you kind of relied on your own sense of things.

#### *Student Affairs and SRC: building trust*

The relationship between an SRC and Student Affairs is often not an easy one. September describes how after an initial sense of distrust, he came to appreciate Student Affairs' role in induction, training and support for the SRC. It is important to note here that at the time of the interview, September had just become the Dean of Student Affairs of the University of the Witwatersrand, after a twodecade career in Student Affairs at UCT and at SPU in Kimberley.

I didn't trust Student Affairs. In my first term in 1997/98, there wasn't much training; you kind of learnt for yourself on the job. Student Affairs didn't even do our induction, our strategic planning. That was outsourced to a private company. And there wasn't a formal training programme and a formal requirement for any of us to go through a compulsory training programme. And my sense is, the reason I didn't trust Student Affairs was because I felt they were very partisan and pro a particular group.

The following year, when for the couple of days I was now SRC presidentelect, I talked to Student Affairs and this is when Edwina Brooks, the current director of Student Development at UCT, really entered the system. That year we said we want Student Affairs to do a proper induction and to help us with our strategic planning because I felt that the previous year had just been a waste of money.

There was now a more formal relationship between us and Student Affairs. And through academic leadership we also ended up doing quite a few programmes together and so you also ended up learning in that way, because the process was very participatory and you take the lead, so we had joint projects. Not only with Student Affairs but also with other areas of work.

And that's really how it happened in terms of my journey. In my later career in student affairs, wanting to make sure that there is training in place became quite a strong feature because of that personal experience. Not just you-learn-the-hard-way.

## Towards co-operative governance

After the landmark report of the National Commission on Higher Education of 1996, the White Paper on Higher Education and the Higher Education Act were promulgated in 1997. Forthwith, co-operative governance would be the principle to guide higher education governance at national and institutional levels. Part of that was a legislated provision for student representation in the University Council and Senate (and their committees), and in a new body: the Institutional Forum.

### *The 1997 Higher Education Act*

September recalls that during his two terms, there was a serious attempt by the SRC to practise co-operative governance; that is to participate in the formal committee structure of the university.

In 1997 the Higher Education Act was promulgated. With that came changes in the actual structure of student governance. Whereas before you would have participated in the Broad Transformation Forum, we were now moving towards the Institutional Forum; we were moving towards the co-operative governance thing. So, we had to make sense of what we were now dealing with and what it would mean for us to sit on these committees and be so-called co-governors.

I was the first co-chair of the Institutional Forum: so what is this animal that we are now dealing with? Thandi Lewin was the transformation officer of UCT at the time and I was sitting with her and having to talk through the structure. At times I was feeling that this is a way we are actually being managed, because suddenly all the energy must go to this structure as opposed to previously where you could just march or write a petition or do whatever. And suddenly you have to rethink some of those things.

#### Key challenges, issues and protests

Academic and financial exclusions, institutional culture and inclusiveness on campus, the initiative by the university leadership to outsource support staff, and changes to the academic timetable were some of the key challenges that September's SRCs were dealing with.

#### *Exclusions and student funding*

There were always the issues around fees. There was always some form of protest at the beginning of the year because of students being excluded on financial grounds. We tried to take this through the formal structures of the university and tried to advocate through the formal structures, but there were also times when you needed to protest. In my first year there was a march to Bremner [Building] and in the second year as well, there was advocating for students around financial and academic exclusions. If there were exclusions it was often a matter of writing appeal letters; you help students write appeals and you try and put the best case possible forward.

You would try to get more money so that people could register, or when it's graduation time again, when there are people who have met the degree requirements, but they don't necessarily have the funding to now graduate.

#### *Reconciliation and institutional culture*

Building some sort of inclusive university community was another issue: How do we make the space better for black students? For example, the RAG parties: they were often seen as these white parties; black students go to the beach braai. And so also, how do we then create spaces where we are able to coexist? And because of the euphoria of 1994, there was a strong reconciliatory kind of tone to it all. How do we work together? How do we build UCT together; how do we open these spaces up for black people and for women? You know like those sort of things.

As SRC president, for example, I went to a Muslim Students' Association dinner, a fundraising dinner, which got me in trouble with my church: 'What are you doing there?!' But for me it was the thing: 'Well, we are creating a different society and as SRC president it's important that I show that, in where I go, and what I do.'

In one of our meetings there was even a discussion around the Rhodes statue. It was very brief and it had more that conciliatory tone. One of the members suggested that maybe a statue of Mandela should be put up somewhere close to it; maybe it should be contextualised; maybe something else should be done there. But it wasn't a major discussion point and debate issue.

#### *Outsourcing*

September recalls the way the SRC and student–worker alliance lost the outsourcing decision in 1999. This issue comes up again when he reflects on the traumatic experiences that SRC members have to cope with.

Remember '99 was also when Ramphele hit us with outsourcing. So that was a major issue. Again, it was about mobilising students, getting the student voice together and putting some sort of submission from the student body together.

We were trying to now use the university structures, because it was about buying into the idea that we are co-operative, that we are in a co-operative governance arrangement and we have structures. So, let's take our issues to the structures.

But when it mattered, the university leadership did not care about co-operative structures. I think at some levels it was a boxing-ticking exercise. The students are here, we have given them an opportunity to express their views and they've done so.

With outsourcing I got the sense that the decision was made. We're outsourcing; we're only going through the motions by consulting. So, our submission to the University Council – students said no, we're against this – we made a submission to argue our points. I do not think that made much of a difference. The decision had been made, it was just going through the motions.

#### *Academic timetable*

Unlike in the case of the outsourcing of workers, when it came to the academic timetable the SRC recorded some success in using co-operative governance structures. At the same time, September notes the challenge of developing an institutional memory in student governance.

There was a decision to change the timetable. At the time, there was a formal lunch hour, but the proposal was to do away with the lunch hour and have period 1 to period 10 running through the whole day.

We introduced this thing called 'meridian'. That idea of meridian and the way it was set up was actually the result of a negotiation.

Originally there wasn't meant to be anything, it was meant to run from period 1 to period 10 with no sort of midpoint break in between any more. It was with the result of a negotiation with Prof. Martin Hall which then resulted in this idea of let's call it meridian. There were meant to be a number of conditions put on when that period could be used, but of course this is where student leadership falls flat because in handing over to the following year the conditions that were put go down the drain. Because we didn't sufficiently hand that over.

#### *Mergers and restructuring*

And then *Size and Shape*, oh Lord, yes of course. So, *Size and Shape* was a controversial report by Mamphela and we participated in it. To a large extent, it was from a protectionist position almost that UCT can't be merged with other institutions. Originally that was the discussion at UCT.

Internally to UCT, the other big changes that took place at UCT was the faculty restructuring, when we moved from 10 or so faculties to the current six. And also what came with the devolution of power to the faculties. So, lots of change was taking place, which was tough sometimes to keep track of.

# Strategies and tactics

September reflects on the academic exclusion and financial exclusion protests as against the challenges of moving into committees and co-chairing the Institutional Forum – different ways in which the SRC tried to make the student voice heard: one in the boardroom and one in the street. Which of those was more impactful? More successful? And why?

Look, I think it was often the combination of advocating in structures and protests that was more impactful. For example, with regard to getting funding for poor students, a lot of that was, on the one hand, about making the boardroom case, but you had to almost support the boardroom case with a protest. Often it was at the point of either threatening to protest or actually protesting that it would create movement. And often it depended on the issue. On the timetable issue, students were unlikely to protest; but on financial exclusions you knew there's enough political will or frustration on the ground for people to actually protest. So, you had to be quite savvy about which form you use.

Now this was before social media. So, there wasn't the instant thing of getting the message out right away. You had to rely on posters, you had to rely to an extent on email, which was being introduced. I think by '99 most people had an email address. But there was no Facebook, there was no Twitter. So, a lot of it meant it was posters; meeting with people in various ways; getting the buy-in from student parliament; and, of course, relying on the student political structures.

The nature of the issue would therefore determine the use of different forms of representing the student voice.

Our input into the *Size and Shape* debate was a Saturday morning colloquium and you collate the views and you submit that.

On the outsourcing it was a similar strategy, but also on the day that the actual Council decision was made, there was a picketing outside the venue to put pressure on management. So, while those of us who were on the Council were inside, from inside you could hear the workers singing outside as part of that. But Council made the decision and then the matter went to court, if I'm not mistaken. NEHAWU or someone took the matter to court, and you had to wait for that outcome. But then the case was lost in court as far as I know, and we lost this one. But in other senses, that was one of the struggles the students never gave up on.

With regard to the fees, one had periods: there were periods when maybe the fees issue was higher on the table than in other periods. But there was a formation of students, a student–worker alliance or some grouping, where the outsourcing debates is one of those that remained on the agenda all the way through and took great prominence again during #FeesMustFall.

#### Reasons for protests

In the context of a co-operative governance framework with formal student representation, the question is: What is not working for students and contributes to them resorting to protest action? This is September's take on the matter:

#### *Slow and stalled decision-making processes*

Decision-making at universities takes time. A decision on a particular issue may drag over a year or it might take two years for a decision to be made. And because the rollover from one SRC to the next, the continuity, the institutional memory is often not there.

Or the political will is not there; it often means that students lose momentum on a particular issue.

Or the debate evolves in a particular way and students were not necessarily part of the evolution of that thing which means that there could be level of frustration kicking in among the students because students would say: we have been arguing about the shuttle service for two years now and still no decision is made.

But because your term of office is so short-term and you need to show delivery, I think then taking it to the street becomes an effective means to get a decision which you would not otherwise get.

#### *Management doesn't understand the urgency*

But I do not necessarily think that protest in itself is a bad thing; often that's what it takes for the wheel to turn, because often I think as managers we don't always have a sense of the real frustration on the ground or the urgency of an issue for a particular generation.

And, of course, there is often comfort and certainty in processes, because you take often long-term decisions and often we have to think about longterm implication. So, I think there's a reliance, therefore, on the university processes that have been set up, to help us get certainty along the way about the best interest for the institution for the long run. There's comfort in the faculty board discussing this new programme or this new rule, and then it going to Senate, and then it going to Council. There's comfort that a number of people had looked at it in a consultative process to know this is in our collective interest.

And that makes it difficult for a student leader, who is here for a couple of months, who's got classes to attend. Student leaders don't necessarily have that layer of patience and longevity in their role.

#### *Student leaders need a 'quick win' – or else*

And I think often as management we maybe do not consider those sorts of things; the quick-wins stuff, the stuff which is also important: the sense of success. Every now and again we must say: ok here we're gonna agree because it's important to affirm and to give students a sense of victory. Because that builds confidence, that helps them move forward and often if you don't have that sort of framing and you only think in a one-dimensional kind of way, then that can get lost and breed frustration.

I think it is about appreciating that. And of course, this is maybe a controversial thing to say, but I think often there is actually no need for this 'strong man' kind of approach. Often students will come and say: this thing must happen tomorrow or else. But why are we 'or-elseing' already? This is the first time we're having this conversation; what kind of conversation are we having? And then egos get into play and it's like well … the institution will not allow itself to be bullied. Suddenly you're having a different conversation. So I think it is also important that in the process, all the different approaches are potentially appreciated and given space.

# **Reflecting on #FeesMustFall**

In the course of his reflections on his student leadership experience, challenges and protesting, and given his various roles in recent years in Student Affairs at different institutions, September reflects on the 2015/16 student movement, its origins and manifestation at UCT, SPU and at Wits.

#### The origins of #FeesMustFall

Part of the story on the origins of #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall is the state of our democracy. Here is a generation of students who grew up under the false banner of being 'Mandela kids', who have been made a series of promises all the way through their lives and who arrive at university, and who are frustrated by the fact that these promises are not reality. You've been through a schooling system that says to you: If you work hard, the sky's the limit!  And in some respects it is saying: These kids are diversity savvy; they don't have the race issues that the older generation has; they are just the future! Meanwhile their lived reality in many respects is something completely different.

It's of course also a generation that had layers of education around their rights and the Constitution and have a sense of what their rights are and that the right to education is in fact a constitutionally enshrined one. It is a generation who got tired of being lied to or of being let down.

So, you arrive at university with the promise of a brighter future, but then something stands between me and you and that goal and then you connect with just what the broader struggle is about. So, I think what this group was successful in doing was to link that struggle. And to make it a very personal struggle; there were clear faces; it wasn't simply, we are now marching! And there was quite a strong intellectual project that supported it. And so even those who said, but we can't afford it, at some point had to admit that this is a noble cause.

And I think that was partly what this generation was meant to do. They were able to frame it like in 1976 in a social justice way: this is about what is just, this is about what is right, this is about the future and the possibilities that the future might hold. I think it spoke to something bigger than just my individual need.

#RhodesMustFall probably helped in that narrative, because #RhodesMustFall happened shortly before #FeesMustFall and it was that sign that we're *gatvol.*41 I've arrived here expecting something else, and again I am being lied to. Let's say I was in a private school or in a former Model C school, where I had to be quiet and just take the stuff in. You know, the stuff about the kid at the school with the hair. So many kids have had that experience and you just keep quiet. And then you arrive at university where you think that finally I'm free, finally I can just be, and it's the same stuff that you're confronted with. I think #RhodesMustFall was a precursor to that; it paved the way, because #RhodesMustFall said we are tired of just accepting things as it is, the time is now for the change.

And unlike generations before, they had the language; there was an academic framing; there was the connecting to something bigger than the self; and they used the power of social media, more so than before. They realised it lay in a simple hashtag – that was our Arab Spring moment! – the power of social media. And so, they were able to craft that into a simple catchy slogan: #FeesMustFall says it all. It was all encapsulated into that. If you read, people said vile things to the students, but even in those things, often people said, but can't they just protest peacefully? And it was almost like the issue wasn't the fees, the issue at some point became the means.

#### #FeesMustFall at Sol Plaatje University

There was also a #FeesMustFall process at SPU. There were protests; there was police on campus. And seven students are still facing charges. I'm not sure whether those charges have been withdrawn but when I left Sol Plaatje at the end of January 2018, those students were still facing public violence and whatever else charges.

41 *Gatvol* is South African slang meaning 'being upset' or 'fed up' (from Afrikaans).

However, the issue with #FeesMustFall was that by and large media focused on Wits and UCT in terms of coverage. But the issues around #FeesMustFall had been the issue at many black institutions for years. It may not have been framed in this particular way, and it may not have taken on the life of a movement, but those issues have been there.

At Sol Plaatje, of course it was an issue. The majority of Sol Plaatje students are NSFAS-funded students, so they – and this is before the current dispensation, so this was when it was still R122 000 cut off, right – so that a poor student, although they were funded they could relate to the struggle, they could relate to what #FeesMustFall was all about.

And I think for many of us, who now find ourselves in leadership positions, that was part of the dilemma: you could relate to the struggle, you could relate to the issues. As someone who came from the farm who in fact was funded by TEFSA, the predecessor to NSFAS, I could absolutely relate to the struggle. I could relate to what students were saying, even during the #RhodesMustFall process.

Therefore, it was easy for me to sign a letter of support that former SRC presidents signed. But at the same time, and this is the dilemma, there's the thing called 'institutional interest'. I am seeing protesting students in front of me and, on the one hand, I must give space for that to take place; but at the same time, I also have a responsibility to ensure that the institution is protected. And being in Student Affairs it's that tough role of relating to students, guiding students, advising students, supporting students, but at the same time also being bound by this thing called institutional interest.

# **Lessons**

Among the key lessons that September offers for future student leaders are: pick your battles, collaborate, push as hard as you can by using the structures, processes, strategies and tactics available, and do not get side-tracked by playing party politics.

Apart from being more committed to my studies [laughs], I think what I would do differently if I were a student leader now is immerse myself more into the diversity of campus experiences. Although I tried to do that in the social sense, I didn't push myself enough to maybe attend meetings of student political organisations and gatherings, or a programme that might have been happening.

I would also do that institutional memory handover stuff more, because by the time you reach the end of your term, you just want to move on. Often you don't take a longer-term view on some of the issues. That's the other thing I would do different, is to take a longer-term view on some of the issues.

The third thing, given my position I should probably not say that, but knowing what I know now, we should have pushed a lot harder. I think often students don't realise how much power they actually have until they're gone. You sit on these committees and you have a space to say things, or to put things on the agenda, that often staff feel they are not able to.

 But I think, student leaders often didn't work together enough. So often students get so bogged down in the party politics and my organisation looking good, and my organisational interests. The #FeesMustFall kind of sits outside of that. But now on some of the other important issues, often an SRC will say: we are this SRC and we're talking, this is our constituency, and so forth; and often they don't cut through the barriers. You can't be a jack of all trades, so you have to prioritise the fights and pick your battles carefully.

And enjoy the experience. Make the best of that moment that you have.

# **The impact of the student leadership experience**

Looking back 20 years on, since having been in the SRC, September describes his student leadership experience as having been transformative and life-changing.

That was the transformative moment for me … What I was when I arrived to what I was when I left student life; it's two different people. It took my life on a journey that I don't think it would have gone on, had I not had that experience. Absolutely fantastic. To this day, it's the lessons I learnt then that I can apply to my role and to my job.

When we are speaking about student leadership, my focus has been SRC, but I think student leadership is more than that. In its various forms it is a fantastic platform for young people to become the best that they can be. It's part of that journey, it's part of preparing them for whatever life beyond the university will be. And that's been my experience; although I arrived older, student leadership challenged me in ways that I think I would not otherwise have been challenged. And I'm the better for it.

Often we place so much emphasis on governance; we put so much emphasis on party–political activity; but there is a host of other activities that are actually out there. Students are not only involved in the party politics, but students are doing amazing things through other student structures: Amnesty International, women's movements, Black Management Forum, SHAWCO at UCT … and a host of opportunities, where students are making a real impact. I see that as active citizenship too and that's also student leadership. There are young people who are doing amazing things and who are making a major difference. When I look at the *Mail & Guardian* 200 Young South Africans, that's what inspires me, because they deliver across the board. Sport also; students going into communities and coaching or just tutoring every Saturday morning. There's the sanitary pad drive: it's making a difference. So, we must not forget the other components of student activism which sit outside of party politics*.*

#### Impact on career trajectory

For September, his experience in student leadership in the mid to late 1990s set the course to where his professional career brought him, being currently the dean of Student Affairs at Wits University.

My interest, even before I came to university, has always been people development. So, before university it was the church. Before university I was involved in an adult literacy programme where we were teaching illiterate farmworkers who couldn't read and write. So, I have always been involved. My journey into student leadership took that further and it was just a different platform to do that. But my interest has always been people development, youth development. And so all my career choices and decisions had been around the extent to which I can make a difference and an impact in the lives of individuals or groups.

When the barriers were broken between me and Student Affairs officials and then the kind of support that I got from those people, it made me realise that this is the kind of professional that I want to be and this is the kind of difference I want to make.

I shouldn't say this about the VC, Dr Mamphela Ramphele, again, but as much as we fought, and as much as we didn't agree, there was always this encouraging, there was an undercurrent of encouraging you, to come out: we want to hear your voice, even if you thought this was just playing the game.

#### Impact on political attitudes and active citizenship

My experience in student leadership also opened my mind to new possibilities and definitely to the injustices that are there. So politically it made me want to be with the political group or party that speaks to addressing the injustices of this world. So that's where it tended to push me towards. But it also pushed me towards having an open mind, to reason, to debate and sometimes to compromise better.

While I'm not actively involved in party politics, I vote, I definitely vote. I have political views and I try to, well, I follow as much as I possibly can political debates and what's happening generally in the country and beyond.

I went to a men's march, for example, the other day. So, when there are issues I will go to the meeting, I will go to a demonstration. For example, at Sol Plaatje University, the institution organised a demonstration against

violence against women that I participated in and helped organise. I sign petitions. In the spaces that I find myself I do my best to make a difference. I consider myself an active citizen, but I'm not involved in any party-political activities.

### Impact on personal and family life

In my personal life, I think there has been an impact on how I relate to the kids in my family and how I relate to other people in the family. So, with the children it is very much a focus on their education, pushing them to want to be the best that they can be; pushing to be as involved as they can be.

This experience has taken me on a journey to be in this position where I am also able to plough back. If I know about a child in the community, what I try and do is to link them to opportunities. Because I see myself now in this role and in my previous roles, as being that social capital. I'm the social capital. For the child wherever on the flats, I'm the social capital, and many times even on my Facebook, I have young people just randomly adding me and asking me questions about stuff. And so a lot of it is an extension of this role.

#### Potential negative consequences: layers of trauma

While September outlines the amazingly positive impact of the student leadership experience on his biography, he also reflects on potentially negative impacts that the experience of being in leadership at a young age can have on a student leader's biography: traumatic experiences, a heavy burden of responsibility, experiences of violence during protests, and even the possibility of incriminating yourself while advocating for student issues.

Being in student leadership can be very traumatic. Personally, I didn't live through, as a student leader, the kind of #FeesMustFall dynamics. But even then, student leaders were exposed to quite traumatic things. Because of things that students share with you, because of the hope that even workers place in you. Which was the case with the outsourcing debate: the sorts of letters that I received from workers who tell you their life story and who then put faith in you to go and fight their case. And then you lose. And then you have to grapple with thinking about aunty this or uncle that who wrote you this note and what does this now mean for their kids. The weight of responsibility that you carry 24/7. It's extremely traumatic and I don't think we do enough. While most institutions now have quite sophisticated electoral processes and induction programmes and ongoing training programmes, I'm not sure if any of us, in any of our systems, have place for an 'outduction'.

But with #FeesMustFall, it is also about how institutions, or how the state, responded: extremely traumatising to students. If you were a first-year student in 2015 and you graduated end of 2017, your entire student experience would have been protests. And that's your framing of university life. And so where are those students, students who were at the forefront? We know that in some instances intelligences services were using surveillance, students were being followed, there were instances on campus where rubber bullets were shot and people ended up in hospital. People are still going to court cases. We have not fully dealt with the trauma of that experience. We now talk about depression, we talk about anxiety, we talk about all these things that young people in our universities are going through and we have not yet provided all the layers of support for students to deal with that experience. And then there is the potential of ending up with a criminal record. We are going to have to deal with it otherwise we're going to send a generation of very wounded young people into the world beyond university.

# **chapter 5**

# **Kenny Mlungisi Bafo**

University of the Western Cape, SRC president 2002/03

*Thierry M Luescher, Kenny Mlungisi Bafo & Nkululeko Makhubu*

# **Brief biography**

Kenny Bafo has since 2016 held the position of councillor in the Cape Town Metro Council representing the Pan African Congress (PAC). Previously he lectured political science and academic development at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and political reporting at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). Bafo holds a BAdmin(Hons) in public administration from UWC and he is currently completing a MAdmin in political science. He was the leader of the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania (PASMA) at UWC from 2000 to 2002 and national secretary-general of PASMA in 2005/06. In 2002 he was elected president of the SRC of UWC.

This chapter is based on an interview conducted by Thierry Luescher and Nkululeko Makhubu on 17 August 2018.

# **Early influences**

Kenny Bafo traces what influenced his involvement in student leadership by recollecting his experiences as a schoolboy. By the time Bafo joined UWC in 1995, he had had a different schooling experience to most of his peers who grew up with him in Gugulethu and who had lived as school kids through the momentous transition years of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

I went to a primary school in Gugulethu in the early 80s. Standard 3 to standard 5 I was at Intshinga Higher Primary School, the school just behind Mzoli's. I went into 4a which means that I was classified as a good student for that cohort and it had added responsibilities. You know, in standard 3 I was in the top five, in standard 4 I was in the top 10, also in standard 5 as well.

I did my standard 5 in 1989. That was at the time when the first cohort of Robben Islanders were being released. It was a big hullaballoo that was taking place. There was a shift, but we were still kids. Time and again we would see people doing the toyi-toyi in the street and we would just join them not knowing what was happening or who was being released; who was Mandela? That was also the time when there was the state of emergency; the townships were having a lot of upheavals. The Witdoek, the IFP-Inkatha, they were also deploying to assist SAPS at the time. We also had the Third Force, those who were staying in a place called Crossroads. At the time they were referred to as the 'witdoek mense'. So, there was a lot of turmoil at the time, but as kids we did not understand what was happening.

Intshinga Primary would pride itself on learning excellence; so, what some of the teachers decided to do was, they called in our parents. They said: 'Look, these kids are now going for high school in 1990 and the situation in the township is untrainable.' The teachers thought that there would be no schooling for that year, 1990. So, the advice they gave to our parents was: 'Let's take some of our best kids into coloured schools.' There was a sense of normality, a sense of stability in some of the coloured schools. So, I was one of those who were then taken from Gugulethu township school into a coloured school.

By moving from Intshinga Higher Primary School in Gugulethu to a coloured school in Athlone, Bafo realised that schools were differently resourced and he now had to learn in English.

It was going to be a whole transition for me from just being in Gugulethu using my mother tongue as my first language and everything, now going into an environment whereby English will be the medium of instruction. So, it was a major paradigm shift for me.

I went to Athlone North just for one year, as part of adjustment. I did extremely well there as well, despite the language barrier. It was the teachers of Athlone North who suggested that I must go to Athlone High. So, they applied on my behalf. I went to Athlone High so that's how I managed to get my high school, grade 12 now, it was standard 10 then.

And the first thing there for me was a wow-moment. In Gugulethu, the only person who had a car was the principal. When I went to Athlone North and Athlone High, almost all the teachers had cars. So, this for me was a wow: this was a good school. The parking lot was full of cars. But in Gugulethu there was only one car and that was the principal's car. So that culture, that transition, that paradigm shift for me it's what instilled a sense of, look I need to be serious now.

The novelty of the new school environment soon faded; after doing initially very well in the new school, Bafo got a wake-up call in 1994. Having always been a top-achieving learner, not getting a university exemption in his matric in 1994 meant he had to find a way to be able to repeat standard 10. He recalls:

That seriousness went up to standard 8; because now I was already in the system, I could bunk classes, and I was able to stand my ground. English was no longer the barrier and I was doing well in sports as well. I was going up to what was called 'champ of champs', almost representing the Western Cape Province for 100 and 200 metres. So, my high school days were quite normal; they were not necessarily disturbed because of politics. Only when I went to University, then I was exposed to other material.

In '94 I was doing my matric. It was the time of the elections. I was the only one in my neighbourhood who was attending a school in a 'foreign', they used to call it 'a foreign land'. I was the only one attending a school outside of Gugulethu.

1994 was just one of those year where you were just going to school for the sake of going to school. All my friends, in as much as they were also doing matric, there was that laissez-faire, that chill, don't worry about anything, we're gonna pass. And matric was a totally different story. In as much as that was supposed to be the year where I was just going to concentrate on my studies, the opposite happened. In 1994 I was less serious on my studies; it was a year where one was just with friends. But one thing I told myself was that I will not fail matric. So, when it came to exams, I wrote my exams and all of that.

And my father then came to me and as is the normal state of affairs that when you are in matric at a certain age, 18, then you must go for the right of passage, you know. So, I said to my dad: 'Look, let me just wait for my exams, my results, and then I will make my decision.'

After I had written my exams, I realised I had wasted a year. The exams came and I looked at my results: I passed but it was not my full potential. I then called my dad and my mom and I said: 'Look, this is not Kenny Bafo, I just request an extra year.' But now the difficulty was, in coloured schools they don't accept repeaters, right. So that meant that I had to go and find another school. Despite the fact that I know I passed, but I only got a school -eavers certificate and not a university exemption.

I sat down and some of my friends, in fact all of them had failed. For them it was like, what's up? There wasn't even a single person who passed matric who was our role model at the time. So, we really had no role models, almost everyone failed matric before us, so it was not like a huge thing. But for me who was someone who was always goal-oriented and someone who had potential; for me it was a very down moment. I felt that I had disappointed my parents.

So, in 1995 when some of my former colleagues from Athlone High went to do their first year at CPUT, then PenTech, at UWC, and all of that, I put my uniform on, Athlone High, and went straight to the principal's office. I sat down with him and I pleaded for him to take me back. He said: 'Kenny you passed. You gave us a lot of trouble in your years. Now you had passed, so that's it.' But he took me back under very strict conditions, and I had to make some commitments. I guess in my case, they were more concerned because they knew my potential. So, I did my matric again; it was the most difficult year for me. I had to stay in line. I had to stay on top of things. Every time I want to go otherwise, teachers would remind me: 'You made a promise to us.'

I did well. I wrote my exam and I felt good. Then, while I was waiting for my exams I had to go for my rite of passage in 1995. So, the results came out while I was still in the bush. My little brother brought it to me, and it was a matric exemption. I had applied to UWC and everything went well. So, in 1996 I went to UWC.

# **Context of getting involved at UWC**

When Bafo arrived at UWC in 1996, the idea of student representation was something new to him and there was no 'student political career' that he had in mind to pursue at university. As a first-generation student, he recalls how many misconceptions he had about studying and how little orientation he was given to understand what was expected of him.

#### Academic life as a first-generation student

I went to UWC to do my BA in law but then, one was not taken through the process. I thought with going for law, it is six months of theory and I'll just go straight to court [Kenny laughs]. That was the misunderstanding. And you didn't have anyone in your family who would explain to you: 'Ok this is gonna take so many years,' that kind of thing. I was the first one to go to university. My sister went to a teaching college. I was the very first one. Everything was new.

I did not stay on campus. I was referred to as 'opidam student', travelling back and forth, and it also had a huge financial impact on my mom who was a single parent with three kids. You know the normal township story. The abnormal made normal. And also just coming out of the bush, you want to contribute at home; the rite of passage on its own it gives a financial strain; and still you have to pay upfront payment at varsity. So, I started working at KFC.

I went to do my first year. Now BA law meant that it had a bit of BA in it. I took history and something else, I can't recall. But I enjoyed history more than anything; the legal subjects were just boring to me. So, we took a decision that is not for us. Let's go and see if we can't change this into a BA.  Many were rejected. You were accepted based on your results, you were accepted from a number of pupils.' We were like: still we don't like it. We were not taken through the process of what this entails. Law sounded very nice. 'What are you doing?' – 'I'm doing law.' It sounded very professional, than someone saying they are doing BA. But now you had to go to the library, you had to look at the legal proceedings and all that nonsense. That frustration coupled with the fact that no one was taking us seriously.

So for us it was like fine; we have a choice of just going to class or not and no one was going to ask why you were not in class. And there was also 'The Barn'. We were more there than being in a lecture hall, you know. But that caught up with us, come exam time and DP and classwork marks. We were coming from the schooling, whereby you could go into an exam room, write an exam and pass. The idea of a DP for us was like, what is that? Continuous assessment …

So BA my first year it was terrible. The only thing I passed, I think it was history with an A [laughs]. The rest was like bad. But then 1997, now that I knew the system, it was a much better year for me.

# Getting interested in politics: the International Socialist Movement and PASO

After recounting his frustration with his first year of university studies, Bafo recounted how he became aware of the changes in higher education that were taking place nationwide, and how 1997 became a year that profoundly influenced his political ideology.

There were so many student activities taking place at the time in 1996. The institutional right-sizing was taking place in 1997, the higher education landscape was being debated and all that nonsense. So it was quite an exciting period for SRCs, you know.

Then came the student uprising of 1997. It started in 1997. At that time I was already attending seminars that were organised by the International Socialist Movement [ISM] and we were introduced to Karl Marx' material, Leon Trotsky, Steve Biko … you know all the Marxist socialist theory was introduced. And there were these guys from exile coming to introduce workshops and for us it was incredible … us being members of ISM, those of us who made a conscious decision to attend the workshops.

I made a couple of friends on campus and I was spending less time at home, despite the fact that I was a day student. Some of them were staying in res. Because UWC had this 60 km radius, so for me to get accommodation in res it meant that I had to come up with an address from Eastern Cape, because I'm outside the 60 km radius. But if you stay in Gugulethu you will not get into res.

So, I made friends on campus and we would have these discussions. What made them interesting is the little stories that we were getting from exiles. The one person that was telling these stories was a guy by the name of Terry Bell. He now writes for *Cape Times.* Terry Bell is a former principal of Solomon Mahlangu High School in Tanzania. He was also the head of curriculum at that school. He was also in the top structure of the SACP. So, he was one of those gurus of the SACP up until he had a Damascus moment where he started to question the two-stage theory of the ANC and Stalin's work and all of that and the route that the SACP was taking. Not post-1994, still in exile. And that's when he started to read a lot of Trotsky. Issues of the revolution and all of that. So, he was part of that group that was expelled by the SACP referred to as Trotskyites.

So post-1990 when they came back, he was part of the International Socialist Movement, and part of their task was to set up student chapters at university. One part was the Student Socialist Action Committee [SSAC]. So, I was part of the Student Socialist Action Committee. That was my first political home. But it so happened that 80 per cent of their members were members of PASO, the Pan Africanist Student Organisation, you know, the predecessor or the precursor or the mother of PASMA, being the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania.

PASO at the time, which was a body of the PAC, had serious ideological challenges. Some members of PASO believed in the socialist, Marxist theory; others believed in the Africanist nationalist approach. And these were guys like Terry Bell who managed to find and utilise the gap and draw in those who were more aligned towards the Marxist way of thinking and they became one of the student socialist movement centres. But now the offices, PASO. PASO and SSAC were all occupying ground floor offices, in the student centre, so you would have members of PASO who would go to PASO for a meeting and they would attend our meeting also …

So, in 1997 when the student protests started, we wanted to analyse them using the Marxist lens. There were many debates that were organised at varsity and AZASCO at the time was very powerful in terms of how they were presenting their case. And these were the guys who were well read and who knew their stuff and were ideologically grounded. The Black Consciousness people are always like that. So, we were engaging with Black Consciousness movement student leaders and all of that.

# Building a socialist state, the 1997/98 protests, and getting academically excluded

Bafo describes how easy it is to become so committed to the 'extra-curricular' student work that it can have bad repercussions for academic progress.

1997 I spent most of my time attending those workshops rather than being in lecture halls. I then realised that there was no way that I would succeed with my studies. You know, 80 per cent of my time was spent attending ISM or going to other institutions representing ISM. When you are a student activist, 80 per cent of your time is less on what you came to varsity for, than what you met at varsity, in terms of your activity. I ended up going to various institutions pushing the ISM chapters, and that of course coincided with the student uprising of 1998.

Because I did not write my exams – I was in and out of Cape Town – automatically one would be excluded academically at the end of '97. And that was a shock for me, because the rules were not that well explained because first year I was not excluded academically. I just failed some of the modules; I passed others. So, in 1997 because I was just not there and did not write exams, I was excluded. I was prevented from even entering the exam room. But that did not bother me at all, because I had a mission to fulfil, and that was the attainment of a socialist state. You get into that zone as a student leader you know [laughs].

Basically in 1997 when the student uprising was really starting to kick in and we had lecturers who were committing suicide, that was the time when most of the faculties were starting to close down under Vice-Chancellor Cecil Abrahams. The Department of Religious Studies was going to Stellenbosch. Music, all those were being closed down. So, I was very much into those discussions in terms of understanding the developments theory-wise and all that. They knew my potential, they knew my commitment, and when we decided to make the institution ungovernable, I was part and parcel of that process.

So, 1997 I was excluded. I remember when we made the institution ungovernable, that was in September.42 My photos were up and down at varsity, and I think this is now where I am going to incriminate myself, but it is fine. What happened is that this one moment we decided: let's make the institution ungovernable.

42 For a closer analysis of student politics at UWC during this period, see: Cele, Mlungisi B.G. (2014). *Student Politics and the Funding of Higher Education in South Africa: The Case of the University of the Western Cape, 1995–2005.* Unpublished doctoral thesis, Faculty of Education, University of the Western Cape.

So, we had a plan. All of us we met at AZASCO's office, there were many representatives: Goodenough Zizi Kodwa, the former ANC spokesperson, he was the president of AZASCO and the president of the SRC. So, we came up with this plan of just going into male toilets and just open up the taps.    That's what we did. So, whilst people were having lectures you just see water flowing in.

There were cameras of course; they picked up my face and all that. The campus protection identified us; there were three of us. So, they chased us and we went into the student centre and I gave my girlfriend my bag because I had a very unique bag. And we went and locked ourselves into AZASCO's office. They could not get hold of me, but they knew I was in the student centre. And they were able to identify the bag as mine. So, they asked this lady to give my whereabouts, but she refused. So, she ended up being arrested as well. There were about 15 of us and she was number eight, because she had my bag. So that case went on for about three months at the Bellville Magistrate Court, but of course they were all found not guilty. And it was only 1998 that I made a decision not to go back to varsity, because the first two years were just terrible. I called my family and I told them …

And, of course, as much as I was not studying or passing, I was accumulating debt all the way.

# **UWC and student politics: round 2**

Bafo recalls how after the experience of the 1997 student protests and its aftermath, he went to work at the Cape Town Waterfront and eventually prepared for rejoining the university.

### Getting back to UWC

So, I said to my mother: 'I just need a space, I just need to find myself. Yes, I've been to varsity, I know what varsity is like now. But I went for a law degree which I was not properly orientated around, what it entails; the system and the culture around what it means to be at university. But I just need a six-month break to really do the introspection.' And her response was: 'This is the second time you're asking for introspection. You did that in matric and you were successful. And this time, I hope you will also be successful.'

It so happened that my sister spoke to a friend of a friend and she gave my CV to Truworths. I went to Truworths on Saturday and I was told the same day to start the next day. When I got my first pay, I gave it to my mother and she opened it, she looked at it, and I said: 'Thank you, now that I have done the cultural thing of giving you my pay, can I have it back.' [Bafo laughs] So from R1 500 she just took the R500 and gave me back the R1 000. So now I was working at Truworths from 1998 at the Waterfront. I was no longer at varsity. And in 1998, Waterfront was booming. Then I left Truworths for Stuttafords; that was now in 1999. It was also the year that I made a decision to go back to varsity. I went back to varsity the following year, in 2000.

I kept some money while I was still working. So, I was able to say this is what I have, you know. So, I negotiated when I presented and also I shifted from BA law into something new. I was exposed to the retail market sector; I had the experience of being a student before; I was much more equipped, you know, and I was aware of what I wanted. So, I went to varsity and of course I kept it secret at home, at first. I was accepted for first-year BAdmin.

Every single decision I was making I was getting the desired outcome. When I started out with discussions with some of the university officials to have me back, they looked at my academic performance, they asked me to write a letter of readmission. It was a whole long procedure. I had to go to Student Credit Management and I had to negotiate my settlement for the debt that I had; I had to make a commitment in terms of paying the monthly instalment.  So, I had to sit with her and explain the process, you know: I'm no longer doing law, it's not that I'm defeated it's just not in me. You know, our parents, they come from that mould of saying, if you cannot finish something, *ikuhlulile.* For me I was never defeated by law, even if I were to complete it, I would still be frustrated. So, I explained it to her. Workwise, even the management staff agreed; if this is what you want, we'll support you. You work 5 to 9. So, everything was working out greatly.

So, I did my first year. I would go to class and 2 o'clock I would catch a train. That was my routine – class-work-class-work. For six months everything was fine until some of the PASO guys were told I was back in the system. PASO in 1999 did not contest SRC elections. So, they hunted me, big time. And they got hold of me when I was in second semester and that's when my political activity was activated – again.

Bafo recalls how he sought advice from his lecturer in political science, Prof. Sipho Maseko, who advised him to reconcile his different interests.

I had passed my first semester in BAdmin extremely well. So, when I was confronted with this challenge the first thing I did was, I said guys, I have to consult someone. So, I went to Prof. Sipho Maseko and I told him exactly my stories as I'm telling you now. And his response was: 'It will not assist to run away from something that you know you are, it will always find you. The best way is to accept it and manage it.' That was the advice. He said: 'Don't let it overwhelm you, try to find a way to live with it.  You just need to have that discipline.' So, I was then able to marry the two. It was through Sipho's advice that I was able to activate my student political activism and still at the same time do my academic work and also at the same time work.

#### Rebuilding PASMA at UWC

In the period between 1998 and 2000, PASO saw a decline in members, in terms of brave soldiers, in terms of activism, in terms of SRC, and also in terms of SRC contestation. That was why in 1999 they did not contest because they had no members.

So, there I was as someone who came from ISM, having had a very close relationship with former PASO members; someone also who has been interacting with them. So, they came to me and said: 'Comrade, during those days, you were active in PASO more than with any other structure.' They won me over in terms of their ideological inclination. I said: 'Look here guys, whatever you have put on the table, I'm ok. I'll do it but here are my conditions: it has to be five committed comrades; I don't want more than five. And we meet on a daily basis, we give each other tasks and we give feedback the next day.' I was working, going to class, you know, balancing everything.

We were five when we started, all excelling academically, and we were also tutoring at the same time. So, I shifted my tutoring hours and venue. I started to use the PASO office for student consultation, and I told them as well to do that. So that is how the office now was more active and people were coming in; not to join PASO but for academic reasons because the tutors was there. That office was kept open for tutoring. You know, and also for lunch and everything … So we had students, some of them were leaders, and they were coming to the PASO office for tutoring. Whenever I look at the EFF I always think of how we activated PASO.

In 1997 PASO had a congress at UWC and I attended that congress as an invited delegate of ISM during their open session. It was in 1997 that PASO was demarcated into PASO and PASMA. PASMA was now the name for the university-sector students and PASO for high school. And also there was the South African Schools Act and also the 1997 Higher Education Act. Comrades had to accommodate that the Schools Act dealt with COSAS and PASO, and the Higher Education Act was SASCO and PASMA.

When I got back in 2000, I became the chairperson of the PASMA branch at UWC. And we first needed to win the confidence of students. Because in 1999 we did not contest SRC elections, so in 2000 we had to make a mark. Unfortunately, the comrades approached me in 2000 during the second semester and we couldn't do anything. I told them: 'Look comrades, let us agree that we are not going to win the elections. And let us agree that we are not going to contest the elections. But what will be key even during election time: we are visible; and we must have a story telling people why we are not contesting. We must spin in such a way that students will understand.'

So we started to have sessions, political sessions and classes on Fridays and also to attend and respond to invitations from other structures as well.

#### Towards the 2001 SRC election

After having shown his strategy of rebuilding PASMA internally and its membership in 2000, the challenge now was to build the organisation towards being able to contest the SRC election. Bafo tells the story of how he and the PASMA comrades pursued the goal to contest and win the SRC election in 2002.

The story now is rebuilding PASMA from the ground up in 2000 to contest elections in 2002. I made it a point that those comrades who were tutoring passed, because that was our goal: Let us set up the academic standards that will make it attractive for people to follow us.

End of 2000 we had a get-together with the students that we were tutoring to make commitments in terms of how we want to shape 2001. Came orientation week 2001, we had materials. We approached the SRC because we were a structure of the SRC, and they gave us a lousy R2 000. We said it's fine. We understood we were building a structure that will be seen as equal to other structures of PASMA outside of the university, because when PASMA at UWC was deflated, PASMA at Cape Tech and Pen Tech was making strides; they were winning SRC elections.

So, in 2001, we went on this growth path of the branch. Then came elections … uhm … we made a study of the elections and we said look we will not win the elections. But we will get three or four seats at most out of the 12 seats. We contested the elections in 2001 as a force and everyone was excited. Remember this was after two years of non-contestation, now everyone was angry and hungry. And the results came, we lost everything. We didn't get a seat. Aye! People were so demotivated, that is those that voted for us. So, we had to wait for another SRC election in 2002.

#### *Participating in student structures*

But Kenny and these five guys, we were now a force to be reckoned with, because we would attend the General Council meetings and ask difficult questions. General Council [GC] at UWC is when all the structures of the SRC meet. Each affiliate would have two representatives and the SRC would chair it. And what made it extremely good for us, or what was working for us was the fact that some of the affiliates of the SRC would even come to us before the GC and ask about certain positions around the agenda. So, we were able to win over some of the affiliates of the SRC. Affiliates being the student organisations that were formally registered with the SRC and getting funding from the SRC, like the religious structures, sports, creative arts, which was UWC choir and all of that. So, we were able to win some of the affiliates.

#### Towards the 2002 SRC election

#### *Building an election coalition: the United Student Front*

Then 2002 I was doing my third year and we told ourselves that come rain or shine we were going to take over the SRC. This was also the first year that we realised that AZASCO [the Azanian Student Convention] was now resuscitating themselves. We approached AZASCO and we said: 'Look guys, if we are serious about elections, we can only have two blocks. That is SASCO and us. Let's give the voters two choices. Either they vote for SASCO or they vote for us. Right, so let's engage.' As early as March 2002 we started to engage around the issue of forming a coalition.

Now people felt that I was so close to AZAPO [Azanian People's Organisation] and some of the GC and PASMA guys outside of UWC were against the coalition; they even wrote a letter saying that if you guys meet with AZASCO you will be given a summary dismissal from the organisation. But we said: 'Comrades, look. When we were all down and under, these guys were nowhere to be found. We started this branch, it's time that we also became arrogant. We had to protect what we started … we're very much on the right path.'

And then in the GC we pushed for whoever was running the elections to come for a presentation, because we didn't want to have what we had last year. We discovered that the same guy who running last year was also applying for elections this year. That's when we took the matter up with management. It went to a point whereby a neutral person had to be called. And now we were so highly motivated because we were winning on this on the table. Management would call us at four in the morning. Management would call us late in the afternoon. We were just having discussions.

Normally the elections were run during the third term, but now we were going into the fourth term and there was a deadlock in terms of elections. And for us the more there were deadlocks, the more we were getting inspired, because our confidence was booming. This was a SASCO-led election but they could not make a decision. And every decision that they wanted to take they had to consult with us. We were more like same scale as the SRC going into the elections.

We also realised that we had to bring in a third party into the coalition. So PASMA ended up as partners with AZASCO and UCSA, that is the United Christian Students of South Africa. It had to have that 'coloured' flavour as well.  We reactivated an old name, because there was a coalition of that nature before, in 1998, which gave PASMA one seat: the United Student Front [USF]. So, we reactivated that name and called our coalition the United Student Front. Our theme was 'unity in action'. So, every time we saw each other we said: 'Unity, comrade, unity.' That was our slogan basically. And the question of the presidential candidate was non-negotiable, everyone had agreed that Kenny would be the presidential candidate; the rest we will discuss after the elections.

So, came the voting day. Students voted. And the next day I left for Pen Tech for a PASMA AGM and because I was just not in a good space to hear the results. Whilst I was there, I got a call from the DVC: Student Affairs, Prof. Ikey van Rheede. 'Is this Kenny Bafo?' 'Yes it's Kenny Bafo.' 'I just want to say congratulations.' I say: 'Who's this?' – 'Prof. Ikey van Rheede, Student Affairs.' I was like, 'Eish, how did you get my number?' That was my immediate response.

And SASCO protested the elections; called for a recount. Because out of the 12 seats, we had won the entire 12 seats. The recount was conducted, and we had won 11 and SASCO gained one seat.

# **SRC induction and internal organisation**

#### SRC handover, induction and institutional memory

After years of a SASCO-led SRC at UWC, PASMA in the coalition of the USF won the 2002 SRC election. In Bafo's recollection, the handover process was far from 'clean'; it was mainly a process of trying to frustrate the incoming SRC.

The next day [after the election results had been announced] we went to management for a meeting as SRC. There is a 14-day handover and then we will be inaugurated. So even before we were inaugurated, we had a meeting with management. And in our discussion with management they told us that whatever demands we have we need to submit them.

And there was a lady there by the name Nondumiso. She worked for Student Affairs but has since left UWC and went to work for HESA. At the time she was also a SASCO member but employed by the institution as the head of SRC admin. So, management knew that we thought that she was suspect and of course wanted to have our own admin.

That's when comrades who had left UWC to PenTech were coming to advise us. The same comrades who did not support our coalition with AZASCO and who had left the UWC PASMA office unattended for two years. They were now coming to say, as senior members, in terms of portfolio allocation, so and so must occupy this one, so and so must do this. And we were like, 'Comrades, what rights do you think you have to come and tell us who must occupy what and where and how?' So, we stood our ground against them, senior as they were. We even reminded them of their threats to expel us and they did not even donate a cent to our campaign. We ran it from our own pockets. We had comrades from the ANC Youth League supporting us in our cause and not our own comrades. So, we told them where to get off. And so some of them never forgave me for that. And those differences then are still current even in the PAC now with some of their comrades.