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Title: The Student Movement Author: Workers’ Solidarity Federation Language: en Topics: academy, racism, South Africa, syndicalist Source: Retrieved on January 1, 2005 from http://www.cat.org.au/aprop/student.txt
Although we argue that only the working class, working peasants and the
poor can make the revolution, we do support the struggle of the students
to transform the institutions of higher learning (the universities and
technikons) despite the fact that such institutions typically train
people for middle class jobs. We do so because we believe that the
student struggle is progressive, because we are anti-racist, because
working class and poor students are the main victims of the problems
that exist in higher education, because we stand for the principle of
free, democratic and open education for all, and because we want to
recruit student militants to Anarcho-Syndicalist politics.
Historically, the universities and technikons have been characterised by
massive racist inequalities. First, in the form of open segregation up
until 1991 between “historically white” and “historically black”
institutions. Secondly, in the form of racial discrimination within
specific institutions: a lack of funding for Black students which
perpetuates the inequalities of the past by financially excluding needy
students; racism by some staff; inadequate academic support programmes
top attack the legacy of “Bantu Education”; predominantly White
administrative councils inherited from the past; racist violence by
reactionary White students etc. These inequalities are the direct result
of Apartheid-capitalism.
But the ANC-led government has done little to challenge the legacy of
the past. For example, it has refused to openly support the student
struggles. Instead, it has condemned “student trouble-makers” and sent
the police to attack protesters in a large number of cases. It has
failed to make adequate bursaries and subsidies available to promote
change, and is even planning to cut funds further! In fact, the South
African is among five countries that spend the least on higher education
in the whole world!
The effect of these practices is to reserve higher education for the
rich. They must be challenged by the student movement.
But the student movement cannot win on its own. Students come from a
variety of backgrounds, and are only in the institutions of higher
learning for a few years. This means that the student movement is
unstable, because its membership is very varied, and because older
activists are always leaving the movement. In addition, students are not
involved in the production process, and therefore lack the structural
power to launch a sustained attack on the systems of resource
distribution (capitalism) and repression (the State) that perpetuate the
problems Black students in general, and Black students from working
class backgrounds in particular, face. The university is not an island,
and isolated struggles cannot transform the system of higher education
as a whole.
It is vital, then, that students build links with organised workers both
on and off campus. Workers in the tertiary education sector, especially
those in the lower grades, face similar problems to the students. Their
jobs are badly paid and insecure, they face shopfloor racism, and they
are being attacked through systems of “sub-contracting” and “flexible
work” that undermine worker conditions and incomes. The tertiary
education sector has very repressive labour relations. Workers and staff
in higher grades, and even sections of the middle class itself (the
academics) also face these issues.
There is thus a basis and a need for the building of a worker-student
alliance. It is the workers who sustain the universities and technikons.
It is the workers who have the power to defeat the bosses and rulers,
both on and off campus.
But we insist that any student-worker alliance must serve the direct
interests of workers. In the short-term, we oppose any “alliance” that
manipulates the workers to win student demands, and then fails to come
to the support of the workers. If students do not support the workers,
the alliance must break. We should also try to bring staff associations
and unions — such as those amongst academics — into the alliance. This
will be facilitated by the fact that most staff are either directly
working class (such as white collar workers) or from those parts of the
middle-class whose conditions of work are the most similar to those of
workers (teaching staff, technical specialists etc. work for wages,
often do productive work, and typically lack overall control over the
work process (as opposed to the small business capitalists and middle
management who make up the rest of the middle class)).
In the long-term, we argue that the current nature of the higher
education system, as it now exists, must be fundamentally transformed.
At the moment, higher education often serves to train experts and
managers who are hired by the bosses to help run capitalism by providing
knowledge, skills and staff. Through the revolution, the institutions of
higher learning must be transformed into Worker Universities: centres of
learning and training that serve the needs of the workers and the poor,
that help produce mass housing, not shopping malls, that train medical
staff for popular health programmes, not private hospitals etc. Instead
of universities and technikons being run from above by overpaid,
bureaucratic elites, we call for genuine worker-student-staff over these
institutions. The basis for this change will be worker, student and
staff organisations taking control over the institutions and removing
the ruling councils.
In order to work towards these goals — a student-worker alliance and a
Workers University — we raise the following issues. We are for student
solidarity with workers struggles both on and off campus. We are opposed
to any and all attacks on workers conditions in the tertiary sector.
We are for the breaking of alliances between student organisations and
political parties in government such as the SASCO-ANC alliance because
such alliances hamper the ability of the organised students to
effectively fight for student demands. We are for the formation of broad
“transformation fronts” of student organisations aligned to different
political parties (SASCO, PASO, AZASCO etc.) as a transitional step
towards the formation of a country-wide Black-centred Student Union
independent of political parties. We are opposed all funding cuts, and
argue instead for increased spending on all levels of education in order
to remove the legacy of Apartheid. We call for an extension of academic
support programmes. We raise the demand of free, democratic and equal
education for all as a basic principle. We oppose all manifestations of
racism, and defend affirmative action programmes.