GOVERNANCE, THE
URBAN YOUTH + TRANSFORMATION
EMERGENCY ISSUES
With regards to
the current shut down of Wits University as a response to the “fees must fall
movement” we would like the workshop to look into the following themes:
Theme:
The Urban Youth,
who governs, owns + lives in the city [Braamfontein] from 1994 [democracy], to
2004 [Braamfontein Regeneration Development Business Plan], to 2016 [Municipal
Elections], to 2019 [National Government Elections].
The workshop will
look back to look forward and ask, what
role does city planning + spatial education play in absorbing the voices of the many who live, work + play in
Braamfontein, and whose knowledge should be drawn from?
On Monday 19 September 2016, Blade Nzimande's
(Minister of Higher Education) announced a optional fee increase from 0 - 8%,
which lead to national protests and a shutdown of Wits University by the end of
this week, when petrol bombs were located on campus, representing a threat to
students, admin staff and academics, as well as to the public around the edges
of the Wits urban campus.
Sub themes +
questions:
What is the role
and responsibilities of the academic institution to protect student interests?
What are the
initiatives purported by the current Braamfontein masterplan in the creation of
places or events that are truly inclusive and welcoming to a wide array of
gender, racial and ethnic classes, and ages, and the potential to have
sustained organisation and political influence from within a transient
community.
What are the
lessons learnt from 2004 to now and how may these be enhanced for 2024 for a
more inclusive city?
On several levels, this case can lead to discussions of themes central
to the Urban Orders focus: urban economic
policies and the opposition responding to these; planned gentrification;
spatial ex- and inclusion; rhythmic orderings; leaving and returning to the
city core; classes and social groups over layering each other in space.
The case will provide a great arena for observing what kinds of 'urban
orderings' that are activated in and through the gentrification process; the
momentary interweaving of the social, the political and the aesthetic that such
urban dynamics give rise to: and so we want to consider how to capture these
empirically and, indeed, conceptually and how to potentially allow these to
work back on the socio-political landscape from which they emerged (as an
interventionist strategy).
Braamfontein is displaying a wide range of stakeholders related to this
story: the students, the university as both public institution and investor,
local businesses, the developer firm Liberty, the BID-project team among
others, all having strong agenda that in a way keeps the space in a kind of
equilibrium or “lock-in”, a tension where an ordering process is highly
contested among very present agents. This spatial ordering complex includes
weekly “festivals”, where groups from other locations and urban groupings –
artists, gay people, tourists, and affluent consumers – are flooding the
quarter, just to disappear when shops and bars close. This rhythmicity is part
of the contestation and ambivalence of Braamfontein.
Site:
Braamfontein, under
investigation re: current protest movements and related security issues.
Voices:
The broader question of
Governance, the Urban Youth, the University + Transformation
Fees
must fall is just a symptom. We have to
challenge the structural and the structural is the neo liberal policy and
economic policy that are running this country, and the government is committed
to protecting. The more they keep the
majority of the black children out of schools, the more this neo liberal, this
capitalist will survive.
The
fact of the matter is that our universities right now are anti poor and anti
black. And what the Vice Chancellors
need to be saying, what we would like them to say, is that they support what
the students are saying and engaging in what they are going to do about
it. Because right now Vice Chancellors
have become Blade Nzimande spoke people.
Vice Chancellors have taken the side of the status quo. They are in fact gate keeping this unjust
system. And so to expect students not to
raise issues with them, and the hypocrisy that comes from that, to support a
system where the most marginalised and the poor are made to fight for the
crumbs at the table of the privileged, which is exactly what kind of propaganda
does, is completely unintellectual and irrational.
The
biggest issue is the commodification of education. The fact is that the system currently is
allowing those to get the education, not that they deserve, but what they can
afford.
The
truth is that the stakes are hugely high.
We do need tertiary education. We
want our universities to be as good as anywhere is in the world, although we
want them, to a sense, to have a flavour, which is of this country rather than
some third rate model of a USA kind, that is accepted. What is perhaps not accepted is, how do we
get to point where people who are capable to be at university and should be
there, do not have to worry about the fact that they have to pay. It is disgraceful that in fact people who
can’t afford to, who have the talent, should be denied the vindication of those
talents of theirs. How do we get there?
The
fees issue is a manifestation of a broader polarisation that is happening in
society, and the world as a whole. So
what you seeing is the inequality in the society, the inequality in the world
has polarised our respective societies, and those respective societies are now
beginning to manifest a whole series of social struggles and fees is one
manifestation of that, particularly in the university system. It is not surprising that it happened there,
partly because you got young students, you got education, which is a big
issue. But these are about access to the
universities and how do I feel comfortable in the very university I am located.
It is
time to recognise that the norm of human presence in South Africa is “black”.
That recognition is central to understanding where real agency for shaping the
future of South Africa is overwhelmingly located, and that “blackness” becomes
so normal it ceases to exist.
If you
are black and are from the rural areas it is very difficult to identify with
the space of the university. The
cosmopolitancy that is there, it assimilates whiteness more than it gives
identity to black people.
Kafense
Mkhari, Fees Must Fall Activist, Wits Student
