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Students Must Rise
Youth Struggle in South Africa Before and Beyond Soweto '76
By Anne Heffernan, Noor Nieftagodien Wits University Press
Copyright © 2016 Individual contributors
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-86814-990-2
CHAPTER 1
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN STUDENTS' ASSOCIATION
SIFISO MXOLISI NDLOVU
In 1959 a group of students at the University of Fort Hare (UFH) decided to affiliate to the African National Congress (ANC) in order to strengthen resistance to the Extension of University Education Act which had extended the principles of Bantu Education to university level. They particularly objected to the idea that Fort Hare should be reserved for amaXhosa as an ethnic group, which subverted its history as an institution open to black students from across the continent. Following its banning in 1960, the ANC gave increasing attention to students who it believed would be receptive to political mobilisation. At Fort Hare the ANC faced competition for student support, from the Unity Movement in particular, which had a strong presence on campus.
After the initial meeting at Fort Hare, the idea to form a new student organisation was consolidated in 1960 and 1961, and coalesced around the nationwide strike against the establishment of the Republic of South Africa on 31 May 1961. Thabo Mbeki, then a student at the University of Fort Hare and a member of the ANC Youth League, told a mass rally that African students were breaking with their submissiveness and parochialism and identifying themselves with the mass struggle of the oppressed African people. This marked a shift in student protests from the "bread and butter" issues of food, fees and corporal punishment, and towards a more direct challenge to the apartheid system.
The May 1961 student strikes had a definite effect on the character of emerging student organisations. African students increasingly identified themselves with the daily struggle of the oppressed majority, and university students began to accept their secondary school counterparts as equals in the struggle. Later that year these precedentsinformed the founding principles of a key new student organisation for black South African students, the African Students' Association (ASA).
The formation of the African Students' Association
The African Students' Association was officially launched in Durban on 16 December 1961, on the same day as Umkhonto we Sizwe (or MK), the military wing of the ANC. This day was an official public holiday referred to as "Dingaan's Day" or "Day of the Vow" by white South Africans. Through its fighting youth, ASA was committed to the eradication of racist laws perpetuated by the Bantu Education Act of 1953 and the Extension of University Education Act of 1959. One of the pertinent questions that the ANC and the ANC Youth League had to address was: 'Do we need another organisation that could help to mobilise oppressed African students?' The decision was taken that the ANC and its Youth League should establish the ASA. The inaugural conference was opened by Reverend GM Sitiwane, the youth secretary of the Methodist Church, and was attended by students from 38 institutions from various corners of the country. In his opening address Sitiwane noted that the success of Bantu Education depended on the cooperation of those whom it was calculated to destroy. He stressed the need for a formidable united front against Bantu Education which he described as a sinister intellectual genocide. ASA pledged itself to staying true to the aspirations of African students for a system of education free from indoctrination and based on universal standards.
Ernest Galo, a student studying law at the University of Natal (Black Section, Durban), was elected the first president of the ASA. The leadership of this student movement included University of Fort Hare students such as Thabo Mbeki, Sipho Makana and Sindiso Mfeyane who were also members of the ANC Youth League:
We took a decision to form the African Students' Association because clearly NUSAS [National Union of South African Students] could not represent the views of African students. We could not use NUSAS to mobilise youth and students and be more directly involved with struggle for national liberation in South Africa. Its composition and leadership was predominantly white and liberal in terms of ideology. Therefore we had to form ASA to cater for the relatively small African student population at universities and as [a] result ASA's membership included students from secondary and high schools. Therefore we had much bigger reach ... then once the decision was taken some preparatory work had to be done and as a result I had to travel to different parts of the country, including Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Alice [Fort Hare], Kimberley, Johannesburg and various places to introduce them to the idea we are going to form this ASA.
Ernest Galo died in 1965 at Qacha's Neck in Lesotho whilst on his way into exile because, although ill, with the security police hot on his trail, he could not be admitted to a hospital for treatment. The death of Galo thrust the leadership of ASA into Thabo Mbeki's hands. Some of ASA's aims and objectives were to unite African students, to promote their interests and an understanding of their problems, to create a channel through which African students could express their views in an organised manner, and to encourage an interest in educational and cultural advancement of students. In short, after the banning of the ANC, African students wanted to speak and act as part of a legal student body. Their demand was for national unity and their programme was finding solutions to problems plaguing African students throughout South Africa. The nature of African students' socio-political and community work was determined by their quest for freedom regardless of whether they were based in urban or rural areas of South Africa. To ask students to do anything else would be akin to asking them to abandon the oppressed African masses. ASA led the struggle for national liberation within a sphere where the fundamental social question was defined by national oppression and the denial of all rights, including the right of the majority of the people to acquire education. This was a marked departure from the orthodox position that had been followed by African students up to now – the position of "education for certification". This was no longer enough for African students. Barney Pityana remembers:
Part of the reason of affiliating to the ANC was in order to strengthen the resistance to the Separate Universities Act in particular to the idea that Fort Hare should be reserved for amaXhosa, if you consider the fact that up until then it was open to black students regardless of their ethnic background ... I have always said in the South Africa of those days the importance of the boarding schools was fundamental because we had students from different parts of South Africa and when these politically conscious students go back to their home areas they continue to form different branches of student movements such as ASA. They become the contact points.
During the 1960s some student activists were jailed, together with other protesters. Others were banned and consequently ASA was driven underground. As a precaution the ANC advised ASA members to go into exile in order to obtain further education and to continue to play a strategic role in the liberation struggle. Walter Sisulu told Thabo Mbeki to meet with Duma Nokwe and Govan Mbeki and, according to Thabo Mbeki, the two 'conveyed the instruction rather than the proposal (of the ANC) that I should leave the country ... they undertook that Oliver Tambo would discuss my future with me when I had completed my first year at university in the UK'. Rolihlahla Mandela requested a send-off meeting with some of the youth before they went into exile in September 1962. According to Mbeki:
We met him [Mandela] at a secret venue in Mayfair [Johannesburg] where he conveyed his best wishes to the group and issued his last instruction before our departure. As part of his final instruction, he made two points to us. The first was that we were ambassadors of South Africa abroad and that we needed to behave properly. Secondly, he said that as one of the first groups of ANC students leaving to study abroad there was an immense responsibility on us to succeed. He said that when the struggle for apartheid was over we would be expected to play a leading role in the process of reconstruction of post-apartheid South Africa.
The ASA goes into exile
As more and more of its student members went into exile, ASA's priorities became focused: it had to be concerned with the question of national reconstruction, and was also expected to supply militants as members of the liberation movement to play a role in the military struggle adopted by the ANC after its banning in 1960. This demanding task was to be attained in alliance with the working youth who were members of the working class.
Though ASA was a legal student organisation, it was forced to work in conditions of illegality. Much of its leadership was incarcerated or was under banning orders and restricted to a particular area. This also applied to activists operating in other political spheres. Police harassment continued unabated and certain activists were not allowed to hold leadership positions within ASA. Such challenges were experienced by Lawrence Phokanoka ("Peter Tladi") who was a member of both the ANC Youth League and the ASA.
Phokanoka was selected as one of the two delegates who would represent the University of Fort Hare at the official launch of ASA in December 1961 in Durban, but he deliberately avoided going because he was opposed to the suggestion that students go into exile, as propagated by Mandela. 'My suspicions were that if I went to the launch of ASA in Durban, we were going straight to the Soviet Union' immediately after the launch. As a result, 'I ducked going to Durban ... I really felt I was going to miss this revolution. I would not complete my [Science] degree.' But the security police were determined to nab him and therefore he eventually did leave the country:
I left Fort Hare in May 1963 ... My contact in ASA was Hintsa Tshume and a certain Mike Ngubeni. I wanted to join them to do some work, both ASA and ANC work. I did not want to leave the country. But they advised me that I cannot stay in the country anymore and that they cannot use me because the police were looking for me. They were only using people who were not known to the police. And eventually in July 1963 I left the country through Botswana. And in the same month, when we reached Francistown, we were reading the headlines about the Rivonia arrests.
When Phokanoka arrived in Dar es Salaam [Tanzania], like many others before him, he had to make a choice between joining Umkhonto we Sizwe, or continuing with his education. With guidance from friends such as Chris Hani, another ANC Youth League and ASA comrade whom he knew from his days as a student activist at the University of Fort Hare, Phokanoka chose to join the military wing when he arrived in exile:
Because I came out on an ASA ticket, I was placed in Mandela House which was reserved for student recruits. Luthuli House was a huge house for MK recruits from home before they were sent all over the world for military training ... At Dar es Salaam we were taken to the immigration offices to arrange for new passports as Tanzanian citizens. I was then taken to Mandela House as a student who was going to continue with his studies because I came on an ASA ticket. On the same day I went over to Luthuli House, I had a meeting with Martin [Chris] Hani, the only person I knew in Dar es Salaam. He came to Mandela House to fetch me with a certain old man from Port Elizabeth called Jeremiah Nxapepe, whose real name seems to be Sam Majola. He came with Hani to try and recruit me to join the military wing of the ANC. In fact I no longer wanted to be a student. Even before I left I wanted to be in the military revolution. Now that I had the opportunity to join MK and return to carry out the revolution, the student thing was just not in my mind anymore.
Those who did not join the military wing of the ANC opted for student life and had to prepare for a demanding life in the political trenches as members of the ANC Youth and Students' Section (ANC YSS).
The formation of the South African Students' Association (SASA)
Several ASA student activists, including Thabo Mbeki, found themselves in exile in the UK in the mid-1960s. Without prejudicing the work of the ANC Youth and Students' Section internationally, they decided to establish the South African Students' Association (SASA), and to include NUSAS members who were in the UK. The formation of a fully-fledged ASA branch barely a few months after Mbeki and colleagues arrived in the UK had faced specific challenges. There were very few African students from South Africa based in the UK, and ASA, by pursuing an exclusive agenda, had the potential for working at cross-purposes with the majority of South African students who were already active in the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM). The students and youth activists supporting the AAM included African students affiliated to ASA and white students affiliated to NUSAS. Mbeki argued that in the UK the struggle had emerged around the AAM. Therefore a major question was whether organising South African students overseas under one banner in order to lead the fight against apartheid was more or less important than seeking ASA's international recognition, as, for example, a member of the International Union of Students (IUS). According to Mbeki, it was also crucial to take into consideration that before ASA's representatives went into exile, other South African student movements had developed overseas branches, for example, NUSAS in Europe and in America. To be fair to NUSAS as fellow compatriots, ASA could not ask these branches to disband in their favour. This complex situation was compounded by the fact that ASA's role in exile was not well defined. It was incapable of being recognised in Western Europe as a representative student body, except in so far as it would act as the Youth and Students' Section of the ANC. Mbeki was also of the view that a proliferation of South African student organisations in Europe without a defined purpose would not be of any help but would rather increase the amount of tension there was likely to be.
The rivalry between ANC and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) youth and students in exile was still bubbling in full force. Some of the African members on the SASA committee were very keen to adopt a neutral position concerning the rivalry between the two liberation movements. This was because the rivalry rendered SASA (UK) directionless in terms of the politics of solidarity pursued by South African students. Another major problem was that SASA committee members functioned as individuals. Such an approach to student politics was more pronounced in the UK than in other European countries where ANC-aligned students were the leading political force. This difficulty was compounded by the fact that most of the South African students studying in the UK were white. These students were in many ways more strategically placed than students in other parts of the world. Another challenge faced Mbeki and his colleagues. Unlike his NUSAS counterparts in the UK, he was unable to establish regular contact with ASA leadership inside South Africa. Such contact would have been beneficial, particularly to African students who qualified for overseas scholarships. Also, it was crucial for Mbeki and other ASA members in the UK such as Mhlambiso to consult with their ASA colleagues in South Africa and provide them with feedback concerning the decisions they were taking about solidarity among exiled students. This included the formation of SASA (UK). Mbeki recalls:
When I was in exile [in] London [at] that time there was no ANC Youth and Students' Section and therefore we were ASA. It was one organising student body so that our students had a home. There was no decision in terms of international affiliations and because ASA was never banned in South Africa we had to be careful and make sure we did not compromise its legality at home by doing strange things outside ... we formed the South African Students' Association (SASA). This was an ANC decision which was that we need to get hold of the South African student population in the UK and therefore the question as how do we do it? We could not say people must come and join ASA and we could not say our people must go and join NUSAS and so we said let us form SASA and attract everybody. We wanted to have access to South African students who had passports. In the end ASA could not survive once we had established the ANC's Youth and Students' Section ... but when I went to meet colleagues at Pan African Youth Movement I introduced myself as a leader of ASA and this had something to do with communicating a message that we are not an exiled student movement confined to London or the United Kingdom but we were home-based and we represent South African students, not South African students in exile or in London.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Students Must Rise by Anne Heffernan, Noor Nieftagodien. Copyright © 2016 Individual contributors. Excerpted by permission of Wits University Press.
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