by Mashupye H Maserumule
Sam Nzima’s picture of Mbuyisa Makhubu carrying the body of Pieterson after he was shot by the police in Soweto, with his 17-year-old sister, Antoinette, running alongside, stands out in the iconography of the liberation struggles symbolising student’s valiance. I wonder whether, had Nzima not shot this picture, Pieterson too would have been consigned to the footnotes of history, like Nkuna has been.
This broaches the question of historicity regarding student activism, which the former Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University, Saleem Badat, has always been concerned about the gap in the history of black student politics. In his book Black Student Politics, Higher Education and Apartheid (1999), he writes: “Student politics in South Africa has been analysed little.” This must change lest we become complicit in our dehistoricisation. Some books that analyse recent student activism, dubbed #feesmustfall, lack the depth of historicity and contextual nuances. This makes Nkuna’s story and his generation compelling, which must be written as part of historicising TUT, especially since, although their activism drew essential lessons from the Tsietsi Mashinini generation of 1976, their pursuit was education as the practice of freedom.
Much about this was evident in the 1984 Newsletter for Youth Unity, the Voice of Alexandra Youth Congress (AYCO), where the Nkuna generation said: “Education is vitally important to the survival of a society. The values and ideas of that society are passed on through education. To transform society, therefore, one has to transform the education system”. Coupled with this was the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), and the Azanian Students Organisation’s (AZASO) launch of the Education Charter campaign in 1984. The Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire explains that education as the practice of freedom is “the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world”.
A quest to realise this became the continuum that bound the struggles of different student generations together, with that of the Nkuna’s 1980s notably managed to bring the communities behind its cause and called upon students to unite behind the transformation of education to have a liberatory effect. Monde Tabata, the COSAS activist from the Eastern Cape, observed that student activism of this generation “became important and may have been a turning point” for the liberation struggle. However, the narratives on student activism are much about the 1970s and the #feesmustfall generations, although the 1980s student generation sharply asked about the type of education blacks must have. If the 1976 generation had ignited it, the 1980 generation had upped the ante in its call for education to serve the aspirations of all, especially black students, and the #feesmustfall took this to the pinnacle of historical consciousness. However, history does not adequately account for the 1980s Nkuna generation. This is despite that, as Badat put it in his book, black students “were not just victims of apartheid but were also thinkers, conscious actors, and historical agents.”
Institutions of higher learning, such as TUT, which have been consigned to the footnote of history, must correct the skewed narratives about their histories by looking beyond hubris to answer the historical question about how they fared in moving away from the segregated higher education system, which the Nkuna generation fought ferociously against. In other words, with many of the racist laws repealed, does the integrated higher education system now exist, where these merged universities do not continue to show racial profiles in the demographics of their student population and staff composition? Attendant to this is whether education has become the practice of freedom with a liberatory effect, especially in a technology-driven economy. In other words, are students being equipped to deal with this reality and discover how to transform the world, including developing their technical and cognitive competencies and shaping their character formation for responsible citizenry for their future readiness in the changing world of work?
These questions must be considered critically as part of honouring Nkuna’s legacy. The anniversary of his death forty years later and the 20th anniversary of his alma mater this year are not just markers of time but integral parts of TUT's identity. Their confluence must be embraced to enrich TUT's historical depth and reinforce its vision of a people’s university that makes knowledge work.
1 This is based on Maserumule's keynote address at the Tshwane University’s Faculty of Humanities alumni chapter, which was hosted to celebrate the University’s 20th anniversary and raise funds for the history book project in honour of student activist Matikweni Nkuna. Maserumule is TUT's professor of public affairs and the executive dean of its faculty of humanities.
A statue of Matikweni Nkuna at the Soshanguve Campus.