The evolvement of higher education in South Africa’s democratic dispensation cannot be separated from the influence of the South African Students Congress (SASCO), which will be celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2021.Every graduate who attended a university or a vocational college between 1991 and the current epoch has, in one way or another, been influenced by the ideas and perspectives of SASCO.
This student movement has a branch presence on every campus across the higher education sector, and is widely respected for having leaders who possess a cutting-edge understanding of how to tackle the most difficult problems facing higher education. The fact that universities today speak of transformation, free education, decolonisation and an Africanised curriculum is all evidence to the fact that the arguments that have always come from a SASCO personality have been superior and as a result, they enjoy legitimacy, hegemony and scholarly reception in the sector.
Besides, it is from SASCO that the selfless, talented, committed, creative, enthusiastic, and ethical leaders who will shape the nation’s future are expected to come. Society expects the products of SASCO to be an exciting group of promising young people who are well-read, revolutionary articulate, disciplined, and impatient with mediocrity, laziness, and ignorance.
SASCO’s priority is education. The organisation exists because of the structural problems that students experience in higher education institutions. Nothing would please a SASCO member more than seeing multitudes of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds enhancing their education to transform, the quality of their future. In addition, SASCO also exists to build a transformative intellectual project for universities that will stimulate and construct progressive thoughts amongst the minds and curiosities of the youth. The strategic objective of SASCO in this regard is to infuse an entire generation with developmental ideas rooted in the interests and sensibilities of the working-class to sustain the nation’s wellbeing and its socialist future.
SASCO sees higher education as a crucial instrument that a country must possess and control to utilise it as a pioneering vehicle to overcome the distortions of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalist exploitation. The type of education that SASCO seeks to design is the one that freely accessible, deepened on African thought, and reflective of black working-class communities. In other words, a higher education system offered by a university entangled in SASCO’s ideological compass should be student-centred and fixated on the complex needs and priorities of the human condition. How the student movement analyses these questions will determine its relevance, influence and purpose.
Importantly, although SASCO is centred on waging a good fight against various injustices, the organisation must still find from within itself the necessary capacity to elevate it’s level of problematising higher education’s unjust practices and equally table compelling solutions with a structural impact so that it can also be seen in the sector as a source of generating beneficial trajectories for its core constituency. For instance, in the growing debate of digitalisation of universities, SASCO must be visible in the discourse and be seen tabling well-researched arguments, alternative models and diverse pathways that will centralise and fulfil the needs and aspirations of disadvantaged students in such a digitalised system of higher education.
Therefore, it is important for the student movement to revisit the basis of its formation, assess its immediate challenges, examine what and who it should prioritise, and cultivate its strengths and weaknesses. Doing such a task honestly with courage would be an existential responsibility which must be self-fulfilled by the membership and leadership of SASCO.
Once SASCO truly becomes this revolutionary organ – it will inherently grow impatience with strange characters within its ranks who seek to use it to facilitate their own selfish ends. SASCO should not be a vehicle for people to get jobs, to misuse students’ finances or to use its name to receive personal money from external bodies. Instead, SASCO must be a voluntary organisation with an activist spirit. It must be immersed in student problems and it must display characteristics of student traits. SASCO was formed to be a fighting weapon and the first line of defence for students from disadvantaged communities. SASCO was formed to deliver a generational mission of a transformed, free, quality higher education.
When celebrating its 30th anniversary, the membership of SASCO must guide their organisation to possess a heightened appetite to question, to think differently, to be innovative and courageously explore new ideas. The organisation must again normalise its intellectual heritage. There must be no fear to disagree on views or the suppressing of disruptive ideas. No revolution can be carried through without bold, disruptive, and unsettling ideas. In this regard, if SASCO is to truly become a non-sexist organisation, it should avail space for the radical feminist and LGBTQI+ views to be mainstreamed across its organisational machinery.
Importantly, SASCO must be respectful in engaging its supporters and opponents alike with maximum discipline and humility. Our organisational memory and historical archive is filled with revolutionaries whom were admired figures that were charming ladies and gentlemen to their constituencies. On this score, the leadership of SASCO must be exemplary by having a constant desire to learn and unlearn, to search for the injustices of their deepest convictions, to self-criticise and interrogate their daily practices, and to question and doubt their own selves. The leadership must seek to improve itself consistently through constant reading and exposure to revolutionary literature and revolutionary work. This entails a leadership that excels academically and is a barometer of academic excellence in the classroom.
At all times, SASCO must be obsessed with its core priority – which is the unity of the student movement to transform higher education.
Pedro Mzileni is a former Regional Executive Committee member (Political Commissar) of Western Region, Eastern Cape. He writes in his personal capacity