SIZOFUNDA NGENKANI CAMPAGIN IN
A YEAR OF ELECTIONS
By MAB Shongwe and Yiva
Makrwede
In
the year 2024, South Africa will be marking a milestone in its constitutional
and electoral democracy, as it will be celebrating thirty years of its
democratic dispensation and a seventh national elections, respectively. These
milestones, historic as they are, they are preceded by an economy that is
growing in the negative, an economy that is unable to create jobs, particularly
for its most productive and educated strata, the youth, it is similarly
preceded by collapsing state-owned entities, particularly the power utility
Eskom, which has exacerbated the economic crisis, and further deepened poverty,
unemployment, and inequality, as emerging and established businesses had to
either close down or reduce their workforce due to reduced productivity caused
by the perpetual blackouts.
These
milestones are preceded by deepening social quagmires like violent crimes,
particularly violence against women and members of the LGBTQI+ community, they
are preceded by a debilitating basic education, with children still studying
under trees and overpopulated classrooms, without adequate learning materials
and facilities, including teaching staff. They are preceded by a higher
education sector that is still unable to absorb the millions of poor and
working-class children produced by basic education, with many of them left
vulnerable to violent crime, alcohol, and drug abuse. A higher education sector
that is perpetually reducing funding for the poor and working-class, with an
NSFAS that is perpetually developing and implementing policies which will reduce
the number of poor and working-class graduates.
The
Economic Freedom Fighters Students’ Command (EFFSC) will be having its Annual
Sizofunda Ngenkani Campaign, an ideological and political program, with a
twin-task, primarily aimed at maximizing access and success for the poor and
working-class in institutions of higher learning. Firstly, the campaign wages a
continuous assault against the market fundamentalist logic of higher education
policy, which puts money as a precondition for access and success in
institutions of higher learning, a logic which essentially says if you are
children of working-class parents, who are without an income or earning a salve
wage, you cannot further your studies, it is only children of the rich who must
study. The EFFSC in this regard, takes guidance from the revolutionary doctor,
Ernesto Che Guevara, who argued that education must not be a privilege, such
that only children of the rich can study. Academic capabilities instead of
economic status, must enable one to study. Furthermore, the EFFSC intervenes
and ensures that upon accessing these institutions, the poor and working-class
must be given all the resources to compete productively, progress, and graduate
to society to address the socioeconomic challenges of their communities.
Secondly,
the EFFSC raises further fundamental questions in relation to the structure of
the South African higher education system. It argues that it is a structure
crafted on what Sabelo Ndlovu Gatsheni (borrowing from Maldonado-torres)
characterize as coloniality- the social, economic, political, cultural, and
epistemic domination of African people in the post-colonial context. Thus,
raises political questions of epistemic violence, humanizing pedagogy,
decolonial curricula, as paths towards deconoliality, a negation of coloniality
as it were.
The
fundamental question therefore, which this intellectual laboring seeks to
invite members of the EFFSC to grapple with, is how do we structure and
organize the Sizofunda Ngenkani Campaign, nationally, in provinces, in regions,
and most importantly in branches, in a context of the historic year of the 2024
national and provincial elections?
We
will attempt to think about some of the interventions that can be made, to
ensure that the scope of the SNC24 is expanded so that it is consistent with
the reality of the 2024 general elections. We will do this whilst taking into
consideration the intervention made by Slavoj Zizek, that we must not rush to
thinking about solutions whereas we have not sufficiently and extensively
pondered on the problem.
The
Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) Central Command Team (CCT) declared the year
2023 The Year of Political Education and Mass Voter Registration. This was
after the organization made a scientific observation that majority of eligible
voters, particularly those who fall under the category youth, do not register
to vote, thus, do not participate in elections. The organization then issued a
directive to branches to register as many people to vote as possible, and went
further to give them targets. The targets were a product of a rigorous analysis
of the statistical data of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), in
relation to the voter turnout vis-à-vis the number of eligible voters in a
particular region.
Therefore,
one of the interventions that the SNC24 must do, is to have Voter Registration
Desks, side-by-side with the various help desks that branches will have to
assist children of the poor access education. The thousands and thousands of
young people who will come to branches of the EFFSC for assistance, with
admissions, registrations, funding, and accommodation issues, must pass through
the Voter Registration Desk, where they will not be forced, by be persuaded
through sound arguments on the importance of registering to vote. Those who are
deployed in the Voter Registration Desks, must be able to explain clearly to
these young people that the reason they are not admitted and reason given is
that the program is full, it is not because a particular institution does not
want to admit them, rather, it is because the so-called democratic project as
led by the African National Congress (ANC) has failed to expand the higher
education sector through building more universities, TVET colleges, and
training colleges. It must be explained to them that the reason NSFAS is not
funding them is not because NSFAS hates them, it is because the Minister of
Finance deployed by the ANC and the department he is leading, the National
Treasury, has reduced drastically the budget of NSFAS.
The
Voter Registration Desks must explain to these young people that when they
graduate, they are likely to be unemployed, not because their qualifications
are useless, but because the democratic project as led by the ANC, has failed
to create jobs for young people. They must be told that they may study in
darkness more often, not because their residence does not pay municipal bills,
rather, because the ANC government has collapsed Eskom and plunged the country
into perpetual blackouts.
Furthermore,
these Voter Registration Desks, must work with targets, each desk must be given
a specific number of young people they must register to vote.
Similarly,
the EFFSC, through its Student Representative Councils (SRCs), as the EFFSC is
governing in majority of institutions of higher learning in the country,
particularly universities, must propose to institutions of higher learning to
adopt Voter Registration Campaigns. One such campaign can be using the
registration portals of institutions of higher learning to encourage students
to register to vote. The portals can be updated to have popup notification when
students enter the registration portal, which gives them an opportunity to
register to vote, before registering for the 2024 academic year. It must not be
compulsory, but optional, so that the campaign does not infringe on the rights
of students to access education and exercise free choice. Students who are
persuaded to register to vote, will proceed to do so, thereafter proceed to
register for the academic year. Students who are not persuaded, will reject the
prompt and proceed to register for the academic year.
Similarly,
EFFSC-led SRCs, must use the resources provided by being at the helm of the
SRC, particularly those resources reserved for recreational programs, to
facilitate Voter Registration Competitions, where, for example, a survey on
elections is prepared, and a price is setup for a specific number of winners
who will be randomly selected. And the precondition for entry is that
participants must be registered to vote, and the website where the survey will
be facilitated must automatically pickup whether a participant is registered to
vote.
The
SNC24 must also expand its reach, and not be confined to corridors of
institutions of higher learning, at least once a week, branches must dedicate
their time to high schools and townships and rural areas, and register young
people to vote. This can be done through expanding the SNC24 Help Desks, and
include Voter Registration Desks in high schools and public spaces like
libraries.
The
SNC24 must run habitual Voter Education Programs, where leaders of the EFFSC
nationally and provincially, leaders of the EFF, and IEC officials, will come
and disseminate important information about elections and respond to questions
which young people have about elections. This can be done on a weekly basis,
and IEC official can be requested to be stationed in institutions of higher
learning for the duration of the SNC24.
Last
but not least, the conversation on the 2024 elections cannot be reduced to just
voting, elections are more than just casting a vote for a particular political
party or politician. The SNC24, as a program which accords the EFFSC to
directly interact with young people, particularly those fresh from high school,
must be used to initiate the Mamela Phase of the EFF’s Road To Victory Strategy
with young people, on their understanding of the challenges confronting South
Africa today, and the kind of world they want to see South Africa being ushered
to post-elections. The Mamela phase is guided by the Maoist intervention that
Marxists do not stand exclusively, isolated in ivory towers, above society, and
impose their worldview as the political gospel and Holy Grail, rather, they
enter into mutual coexistence and conversation with them, live with them and
learn from them. They take the raw, creative policy articulations of the masses
and package them into an organized policy and political program of the popular classes.
Of course this will speak to some of the policy interventions desired by these
young minds; this will speak unto the kind of arts, sports, and culture
policies, the kind of economic policies, the kind education policies, the kind
of healthcare policies, etc., they want to see after they have voted a
particular political party into state power.
The
2024 elections are very important, they provide us with an opportunity to
change the cause of history, and rescue our people from landlessness, poverty,
crime, gender-based violence, unemployment, and inequality. The EFFSC cannot
fail to contribute qualitatively, through voter education programs of young
people, and quantitatively, through massive voter registration of young people,
to vote in the 2024 elections. Our role cannot be relegated to sloganeering,
2024 is our 1994 cannot be a mere slogan, we must give life to it, through
innovative political thinking and program, and the SNC24, provides us with a
unique opportunity to do this.
