The death of Xola Nene must spur us on to fight against crass materialism and opportunism?
On the 09th of October, 2010, in Ndevana Location near King William's Town, the tombstone of the late comrade Xola Nene will be unveilled. Comrade Xola "Gangatha" Nene was cowardly murdered in his sleep by thugs of the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania (PASMA) in 2001, whilst deployed to campaign for SASCO at Butterworth campus of the former Eastern Cape Technikon. He was then the Chairperson of South African Student Congress (SASCO) in the Eastern Cape Province. He was also a member and activist in the ANCYL, ANC, SAPC and COSATU. He was a rare breed that had a voluptuous appetite for Mass Democratic Movement politics. As his comrades, friends and family pay tribute to this young, gallant and committed fighter of our revolution, it is one's intention to also attempt at characterisation of the period that immediately followed the death of Xola Nene in the Eastern Cape.
The death of Xola and its aftermath revealed a particular political reality that is not much talked about within the political trajectory of the Eastern Cape Province. This political reality is seldom discussed even among those who used and still share a common political perspective with Xola on various, vexing political questions facing our province and the country generally. This political reality is that following the death of comrade Xola Nene, there was a kind of political annihilation and the dislodging of progressive political forces in the province in favour of the opportunists who saw an opportunity to ascend to political power for reasons best selfish to them. This political annihilation and the dislodging of progressive political forces was expressed in two forms.
The first form was the conscious disruption and dislodging of the growing resistance from SASCO and other progressive political forces in the province against the status quo. The main thrust of that status quo was the capitalist market logic which favoured the commodification and commercialisation of education so that only those who had the money were given an opportunity to access higher education. As the hub of that resistance in the province and student movement in general, the University of Fort Hare students fiercely opposed such a capitalist logic; with Xola's SASCO in the forefront of such struggles.
We stood firm proclaiming that students could not agree to submit themselves to a capitalist logic that regarded university education as a privilege for the few rather than a right for the majority of our youth, African youth in particular. We were unequivocal in stating that in the face of huge shortages in relevant skills in the country, financial exclusions were counter productive and were inimical to the ANC government's stated objective of ensuring a better skilled youth for a growing and shared economy. We vowed never to betray the cause of freedom and fought tirelessly to ensure the right to education for the youth of this country.
Accordingly, it became clear to the powers that be--- both within higher education institutions and government--- that the best strategy was to disrupt, dislodge and annihilate SASCO's leadership and other activists so that there was very minimal if at all disruption to the market fundamentalism to commodify education. Comrades were either expelled or suspended from tertiary institutions and were forced out of the province as no employment opportunities were available for them given the hostilities directed against them. Many of those who pursued this annihilation strategy in the Eastern Cape Province thought that Xola's comrades would end up in the political wilderness and never to be heard of again. Nothing could have been further from the truth!