THE ECONOMIC FREEDOM FIGHTERS CALLS ON STUDENTS TO REJECT SASCO IF THE ORGANISATION IS DETERMINED TO DEFEND THE STATUS QUO THAT IS ANTI-WORKING CLASS AND DETRIMENTAL TO THE COUNTRY'S PROGRESS:
19 June 2013
It is with great disappointment that we wake up in the morning to scathing attacks on Economic Freedom Fighters from an organisation that was once an epitome of working-class interests, the South African Students Congress. In a statement released today, SASCO spews a lot of venom towards Economic Freedom Fighters, arguing that we are "crazy political juveniles" and "daylight tsotsis who have stolen the programme of the ANC Youth League", referring to the Economic Freedom Fighter's unwavering call for the return of the commanding heights of the economy to the hands of the people. At the heart of its argument, SASCO is calling on students in South Africa to defend the ANC against Economic Freedom Fighters. This travesty cannot go unchallenged.
SASCO has always projected itself as an organisation that is unapologetically biased to the needs of the poor, and has argued many times against the neo-liberal posture of the ANC under the current administration, which it has claimed represents bourgeois nationalist policies that are not in the interests of the poor. Such policies by their very nature are not capable of confronting the plethora of challenges facing students, nor can they address the fundamental struggle for free education.
This can be clearly noted in one of the 53rd National Congress resolutions of the Zuma ANC (ZANC), held in Mangaung last year, which reads as follows,"Consideration must be given to a graduate tax for all graduates from higher education institutions." What this effectively means is that students from working-class backgrounds, who in their majority are already on NSFAS, will be expected to pay an additional graduate tax. Many of these students earn barely enough to make ends meet and more than half a million of them are unemployed. A graduate tax, as proposed by the Zuma administration, will only strangle them deeper into poverty.
In fact, the same SASCO which today wants to argue that the current administration is committed to free education is the same SASCO that only four months ago argued the opposite. In a statement released on the 7th of February, SASCO made it clear that this resolution works against the logic of the implementation of Free Quality Education, which appreciates the historic burden of the poor graduate, and seeks to redress the gap between the rich and poor in our country. SASCO went a step further to locate this resolution as one which serves the interests of the capitalist class as opposed to the poor, by protecting capital from its responsibility of contributing towards the goal of free education. Reminding the ANC of its abandonment of the objectives of the Freedom Charter, SASCO concluded its statement with a poignant statement calling upon the ANC to "live up to the Freedom Charter and fight poverty, unemployment and inequality".
Only a year ago, the same SASCO that today wants to project the ZANC as an organisation that champions free education, was clear that the ANC under the current administration takes this struggle for granted. In yet another scathing attack on the current administration, SASCO rejected the appointment of Mr Mdu Manana as the Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training. SASCO argued, correctly, that the appointment of an individual with no track record in issues related to education, particularly higher education and training, was a clear "demonstrates that the ANC led government does not take education seriously". Today SASCO wants to argue the opposite.
SASCO has been a loud and critical voice against the National Development Plan, which serves as the ANC's vision for 2030. In its May Day statement, released literally six weeks ago, SASCO rejects this anti-working class policy. It recognises and asserts that the ANC led government has turned against workers by unilaterally withdrawing collective bargaining agreements. "Proposed policies such as the youth wage subsidy are aimed at displacing workers from decent jobs and perpetuate the cycle of poverty. We call upon South African workers to totally reject the right-wing National Development Plan (NDP) and call for the immediate implementation of the Freedom Charter".
SASCO is demobilising students and the broader working class majority by wanting to project that the "ANC has done its best" to address the structural inequalities that our people battle with across all sectors of society. It presents the current realities as inevitable and natural, and thus unchallengeable. Understanding that education is a site of struggle and that struggle is a process of sharpening contradictions and giving birth to different pedagogy determined by current existing material conditions, SASCO cannot want to tell the working class poor that it has no control over the status quo. The African continent has, over the past three years, been exposed to the power of the ordinary masses of our people. If the Arab Spring Uprisings that spread across the north of the continent -in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt- taught us anything, it is that there is nothing more powerful than the ordinary masses of our people being mobilised and organised around the struggle for economic freedom.
SASCO would not, in various different statements over the past year, be reminding and calling on the ANC to implement the Freedom Charter if the ZANC had not abandoned it through its policies. Young people in this country must be very worried by SASCO's dishonesty. SASCO, once an organisation that stood firm in its principles, has now assumed an opportunistic posture in defence of a failed administration by compromising students at the altar of a regressive regime.
It appears that SASCO's commitment to Socialist principles is a matter of expedience and not genuine. No organisation that claims to be a vehicle of Socialist principles can mobilise young people, the future of this country, against rejecting an organisation that seeks to wage a struggle for economic freedom, a struggle whose motive force is the poor.
Basically, SASCO has revealed for all to know that it is actually pro neo-liberal, capitalist, reactionary, tribalist, factional, right-wing, and insane Zuma African National Congress (ZANC), and students should reject them for hypocrisy. SASCO is not an autonomous organisation; that is why it pretends to be disagreeing with the ZANC, whist they actually endorse the ZANC because the ZANC gives them supper. We will never take organisations that sing for their supper serious. Never!
Statement issued by Malaika wa Azania, Economic Freedom Fighters, June 19 2013
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