FEES MUST FALL ACTIVISTS ARE BEING PROSECUTED IN SILENCE
The Young Communist League of South Africa Gauteng Province has learned with great shock that despite numerous calls for a permanent stay of prosecution against Fees Must Fall student activists, there is on-going prosecution taking place in silence.
To continue with the prosecution and subsequent sentencing of FMF activists is a subversion of justice. It is a classic case of the law being used to further suppress the echoes of working class communities from rightfully demanding that children from poor backgrounds enjoy the right to education as espoused in our constitution. This is tantamount to putting the entire working class on trial for being poor and unable to afford tertiary education.
Delegates to the 54th ANC national conference, deriving their mandate from branches which are organs of people’s expression, reaffirmed the historical call when they resolved on free education. The recent pronouncement on this clarion call by the president of the republic therefore absolves FMF student activists. The circumstances of their arrest, prosecution and sentencing should not be understood outside of the material factors that saw them being apprehended and the historical context of the struggle for Access by the previously disadvantaged. .
We call on the South African government and all agencies involved to consider granting amnesty and wiping off of criminal records against all those who have been prosecuted and sentenced as a result of Fees Must Fall. Surely if we can forgive proponents of apartheid whom committed atrocious crimes against the black majority, cohesive arms of the state can equally reconsider cases against FMF student activists. Their only crime was to call for free education for the poor.
Statement issued by Alex Mdakane, YCLSA Gauteng Provincial Secretary, 21 January 2018
