As old as man, accountability and protest have accompanied our existence; some would argue that it has even lived longer than man. Any form of authority should be held accountable for their decisions and deeds towards humans and all life forms that exist. The premise of holding any form of authority accountable for their actions has always sat on the grounds of mass mobilization; the community is at the core of any form of revolt, holding authority accountable is about the people and the ability of the people to leverage numbers against the power in question.
South Africa has had a history of strong protest action, the protest action in south Africa has always been premised around the fight for equal rights, however, the protest actions have been met by strong propaganda actions that attempt to delegitimize the nature of the protest, in the context of South Africa during apartheid, South Africa would have been consistently anti any form of protest as there was a need to secure colonial authority/power. The protest action has been deemed as violent, as barbaric as if the state did not play an active role in facilitating the violence that happened, the state can even be indicated of being the chief protagonists of the violence in apartheid South Africa.
Fast forward to the year 2015 at the peak of student’s activism, student activists across the country took heed to the call of free education and adopted it as their generational mission, in an attempt to advocate for free education; several protest actions took place across the country. The protest actions in these universities were just actions meeting constitutional requirements however they were met by the draconian actions of University authority and the state by the militarization of various campuses by the police force and in some campuses additional private security companies that acted violently and influenced violence. The means did meet the ends, the state declared free education and its implementation remains a question and a debate amongst several stakeholders in the country.
A sharp curve has been presented to the student movement in the announcement of online education and a desire across the board from institutions to migrate to online learning, although a mixed system of learning will exist, there is an inability of accountability to occur in status quo. In an attempt to hold the institution accountable through conventional methods of protesting, the institution can simply offload the majority of academic activities to online learning and furthermore deem protest actions null. A clear balance between conventional methods and digital methods need to be adopted in having a clear way of holding institutions accountable. This problem creates a massive problem in an attempt to minimize the draconian power of the institutions.
Digital protest have in the previous years proved to be effective, in our current history we can reference the Arab spring that sparked a regime change in Egypt and furthermore started several protest in the middle east, this digital protest has proved that various forms online protest can prove to be effective and have the desired influence in bringing down the state. The digital protest galvanized a mass action that the world had not been ready for, the digital protest further materialized in the conventional methods of protesting.
Now as the student movement, how do we use digital protesting in institutions of higher learning?
Institutions can adopt various methods of protesting online, they can either adopt aggressive forms of protesting or adopted the soft method of protesting. The context mentioned above in the vilification of protesting will influence the decision of the forms of protest that every institution will adopt, the same context will determine the intensity of the protest action that is to be taken.
The soft forms of protest take the form of what is commonly used in status quo as the main methods of protesting, the hashtag activism on several social media platforms and the gunning of public sympathy to put on the spotlight on the injustice of any institution, as a classic example in the dawn of the announcement of the migration to online learning, various institutions used the #Boycottonlinelearning on twitter. The hashtag pioneered by the National Executive Committee of SASCO, lead to the highlighting of the socio-economic disparities that hinder online learning and its inclusivity. This caught national attention and furthermore drew journalist and other media outlets to cover the issue and report on the unjust migration. Other forms of soft activism may include but not limited to;
• Simple silent boycott by not participating in online learning,
• Flood methods – filling up the VC email address with complains that renders him ineffective, etc.
The more aggressive methods are borderline criminal activity pending on how they are used and how far they are pushed, Hackavism is a form of online protest that seeks to gather information from institutions to use the information to either enlighten the people or give them an upper hand in dealing with the institution. This could prove to be criminal if the hacker infringes on the POPI act or releases information that may put the operation of the institution at risk, under normal circumstances this is the last method of activism to be used; this is the equivalent of burning down buildings which is vandalism. This is the beast to be unleashed to push if institutions are rigid in giving students their rights.
The future is taking shapes and forms that demand us to think outside the box and extends our forms of activism. Activism remains the greatest act of compassion that anyone can deliver to his people, its evolution and existence is for us to maintain and safeguard by any means necessary.
As a student movement, there is a dire need to adjust our tactics and this can only be done through asking the necessary questions in a pursuit to give our constituency a better fighting chance, we need to invest in reinventing our modes of operation, critique and add on to the information base that exists.
Phathutshedzo Nthulane is the Provincial Convener of SASCO in Gauteng. He writes in his personal capacity.