Welcome to the third edition of Mothuti of the 21st National Executive Committee. In times of uncertainty, frustration and sacrifice, people look to leaders to make difficult but necessary decisions for their immediate and future benefit.
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed the country in uncharted waters, but the government has responded by protecting its people, putting life before economics, caution before profits. In line with this, oi skipper, the President of the country, Cyril Ramaphosa has declared a two-week extension of the national lockdown, which has been widely accepted.
The extension has, however, not only presented economic challenges but in addition, academic challenges for our students. Students fear the possibility of an incomplete 2020 academic calendar due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This not only delays their appointment with the future but their responsibility to their families and the country as well.
In response to the extension, institutions have started with plans of possible electronic models of learning (e-learning). The implementation of these plans will sharpen class Contradictions in higher education sector and perpetuate a two-tier education system based on class backgrounds. This calls for the student movement to be vigilant and creative in tackling the challenges posited by what would seem to be the advent of new world order.
Close attention must be given to the impetus that the virus will give to the acceleration of the 4IR and the class stratifications that seem endemic in the unguided advancement of the 4IR. In whose class interest is the current trajectory of any revolution, of any change in the mode of production? Students must graple with these questions and act with pace in providing solutions that will bring about a more equitable society.
In these times, we are reminded by the courage and resolve of the late comrade Solomon Mahlangu. Comrade Mahlangu never let the environment he found himself change his consciousness and conviction to liberate our people. A young Mahlangu stared death in the eyes and was able to inspire a nation. This is the spirit in which we carry in the fight against COVID-19.
This edition of Mothuti has the following articles:
1. “Self-criticism will strengthen and unite the student movement”- Pedro Mzileni
2. “Women and COVID- 19” – Precious Banda
3. “Our new educational setups will be the new post-covid19 lockdown struggle in fighting the spread of local transmission and keeping of social distance” – Sive Madala Gumenge
This must serve as a start to educate, learn and lead young people and to rally them behind the cause of the National Democratic Revolution; this will posses an increasing appetite to think differently, to produce changes and explore new ideas and normalize intellectual engagements.
“Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously “born” in each individual brain: they have had a centre of the formation, or irradiation, of dissemination, of a persuasion-a group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them and presented them in the political form of current reality.” Antonio Gramsci
[Views published here are those of the writer, not of the organization unless indicated otherwise]
Cde Bamanye Matiwane
President ~ SASCO