OPINION

#FallismMustFall

Justin McCarthy says an odious militant totalitarianism has infected our universities

The spectre of an imploding tertiary education system looms like a swarm of giant spindly-legged Martian cyborgs, complete with bulging green Muscoidean eyes straight out of H.G. Wells’ dystopian imagination, oiled by the forebodingly rich timbre of Richard Burton’s narration.

The country cowers under the Fallists’ imposed portent, bended knee at the rancid exhortations of mini-me dictators brandishing weapons of mass delusion. The end game is a zero-sum one in which fatuous destruction impregnates sterile automatons hotwired to regurgitate populist sound bytes to a ceaselessly metronomic beat.

This time last year the #FeesMustFall movement was the public darling, having succeeded in obtaining an audience with he-who-will-not-be-accountable, gaining binding undertakings. It was a significant moment in our democratic history, where the assorted riff-raff poo-chuckers and dustbin arsonists were pushed to the fringes by a swell of disciplined mainstream student anger.

Fast forward a year later and the riffraff are back at their zenith, having hijacked the movement’s legitimacy with sjamboks, petrol bombs, intimidation and a little help from an advocate-cum-politician, our very own self-styled Savile Row Che Mpofu.

Wits University’s riffraff is at the vanguard of its own colonisation efforts, and a certain Mcebo (aka Sisulu) Dlamini is the Hitler admiring firebrand hijacker-in-chief. Now Mr Dlamini is generous with a taradiddle but parsimonious with the truth, having passed himself off as the love child of Zwelakhe Sisulu and a Swazi princess and laying claim to degrees in actuarial science and nuclear physics while simultaneously studying towards an undergraduate degree in politics and an honours degree in mathematical statistics.

In May 2015 Dlamini was removed as SRC president for misconduct, but did graduate with a Bachelor of Arts. A video of his graduation provides a glimpse into the maniacal supersized ego: one could be misled into thinking he was graduating with all four degrees. Delusion and deception, it appears, are hallmarks of populist personality cults, and Dlamini has fine examples to follow in the likes of Number One and his very own revolutionary hero, Julius Malema.

Despite no longer having apparent ties with Wits, Dlamini has been a tall poppy on campus and in the media throughout the year, completely overshadowing his successor, Nompendulo Mkhatshwa. Precisely what right he has as a non-elected, self declared “leader” of the movement is indecipherable. So too Dali Mpofu who generously inserted himself into the fracas as a “concerned parent”, directly after lecturing the vice chancellor that he (Habib) was now the students’ collective parent.

The doublespeak nonplussed me too, but in the shambolic pseudopolitik of woke South Africa, legitimacy is what you claim it to be and bares no resemblance to cultural misappropriations such as democratically elected leadership. Just pull in with a megaphone and a cause, armed with a selection of vaguely Bolshevist delusions and set out your stall for political office.

Which is just what Dlamini did again last Friday. After reaching a negotiated agreement the previous night over the historical general assembly on Friday, he immediately breached it by unilaterally declaring Habib unfit for office, asserting the VC would be barred from addressing the gathering because he is a “devil” and a “criminal”. 

He then announced to the gathered admirers that Habib had “run away”, thus waiving his rights and obligations to be vice chancellor, before assuming the position himself. “As of now‚ I'm taking over as vice chancellor. Comrades‚ with the power that has been vested on (sic) me‚ I am going to chair the assembly.”  Which authority vested these powers remains a mystery, but laborious procedures such as protocol are hardly going to dissuade a psychoneurotic opportunist with a ready-made audience and a microphone. ‘’There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor popular, but he must take it because his conscious (sic) tells him it is right,’’ Dlamini declared last year.

Perhaps it was his conscience that vested him with the authority to de-platform the vice chancellor and usurp the position. Or perhaps it was his just ego fracturing under the immense pressure of simultaneously graduating in nuclear physics and actuarial science.

Dlamini is but one example of the odious militant totalitarianism that has infected our universities. Chumani Maxwele, Ntokozo Qwabe and an array of other “Fallists” have hijacked the institutions and the million active students without any democratic mandate.

Their claim to legitimacy is self professed hokum, and their actions resemble intentions much closer to infamy than the legitimate cause they falsely represent. One of their favourite expressions is “demand”, and if authorities don’t bend they impose their demands by force.

That is fascism, pure and unadulterated by any vestige of democracy. Wits University was smart to run an SMS poll in which 77% of students elected to resume the academic year. That the poll response rate was almost 60% of 37,000 students is testament to its legitimacy precisely because it includes the silent majority probably supportive of the cause but unwilling to associate with fascist methodologies.

Predictably, Dlamini and his cohorts first attempted to interdict the administration from conducting it, and when the court ruled against them, proclaimed it illegitimate on the ridiculous basis it was open to fraudulent tampering, in spite of leading audit firm SizweNtsalubaGobodo managing the process.

The antics of these self-proclaimed leaders, at Wits, UCT, UKZN and many other campuses is thoroughly disingenuous. Their approach belies an intentional zero sum game. Game theory specialist Dr Woody Brock is instructive in this piece titled ISIS versus modernity and the West (registration required).

Brock argues that ISIS’ conviction of holding the moral high ground is a major source of their power over the West. The same can be said about the Fallists – their conviction they hold the moral high ground emboldens them with an aura of the untouchable and ungovernable. Brock emphasises the fundamental distinction between positive-sum bargaining and zero-sum games: in the former both parties seek a settlement and negotiate over how to share the pie.

In the latter, there is no pie to divide as one party is intractably welded to a fixed outcome. In the case of ISIS, it’s a global caliphate under Sharia law, with kafirs either put to death or bonded in slavery; in the case of Fallists it’s the inmates running the asylum.

Their demands include free tertiary education, free accommodation, free sustenance and a daily deep tissue massage. Ok, I exaggerate on the last claim but with their penchant for moving goal posts and appetite for self-indulgence that may yet materialise.

In reality they are sacrificing the futures of millions of young South Africans for their own political careers. Who needs a degree when you can eat like an MP and have access to the country’s treasury? Taking their lead from populist parasitic politicians they plot a shortcut to the casino on taxpayer funds.

Some gullibles swallow their rhetoric; the majority see through it but are intimidated into silence. The consequence of their behaviour is the entrenchment of economic disparities as the institutions that offer them a passport to a better future are decimated right under their noses.

Many Fallist leaders are a pox on the nation, and government, university administrators and fellow students need to defeat them before the destruction becomes carnage.