SIZOFUNDA NGENKANI CAMPAGIN IN A YEAR OF ELECTIONS By MAB Shongwe and Yiva Makrwede

 

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.