i was driving to a university campus to do a Peace Justice Witness shift and listening to the band Bastille on a cd in my car.

And the walls kept tumbling down
In the city that we love
Great clouds roll over the hills
Bringing darkness from above

And i thought to myself, “Wow, that seems like familiar imagery. i wonder if this is the #FMF theme song?”

But if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
Nothing changed at all?
And if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
You’ve been here before?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?

A year ago there were some protests happening at universities across South Africa and so yes, that bit seems true too. And is the question a lot of people, on both sides i think, are asking.

But actually the part that hit me hard and has continued to do so [cos i have played this album and particularly this song on repeat every time i have been in our car the last few days] was the bridge which goes like this:

Oh where do we begin?
The rubble or our sins?
Oh where do we begin?
The rubble or our sins?

Isn’t that the conflict between armchair worrier and activist/peacekeeper?

What is the question that is defining my view on the current University crisis?

For a lot of the people it’s the rubble: Students burning paintings, throwing faeces at statues [and now people], students burning buildings, students throwing rocks, students throwing water and pee balloons, students beating up a guard, interrupted classes, postponed or cancelled exams.

For some others, it’s a different kind of rubble: Private security presence [which can be quite intimidating at the best of times], police shooting rubber bullets, police firing tear gas, security dressed in riot gear, police firing water cannons, police/private security raiding student reses, security blocking entrance to buildings, students arrested and awaiting trial or sitting in jail.

But there is another group of people who are focusing on the sins: Where have we [the people of South Africa/government/university heads and staff] got it wrong? What aspects of present education bear remnants of a broken past? How do we decolonise education?

In their call for decolonisation, the students have issued a searing challenge to academics to seriously reflect on what we teach and its relevance to our specific location and social context. What civilisational delusions and historical misrepresentations, what epistemic illusions and entrenched biases do we maintain when we fail to reflect on the knowledge we convey in the classroom? [Joel Modiri, full article here]

The armchair commentators and virtual stone throwers [because let’s be honest, that the majority of what they do] certainly tend to take the rubble approach, which sadly mostly prevents them from engaging more authentically and trying to hear/see/understand the bigger picture story that exists beyond whatever newspaper headline, news story or forwarded Facebook status they chose to base their entire feeling on.

There is also a group, or groups, of people who are trying to hold both together in tension. As part of the PJW team we stand present among some of the rubble created by both sides while we reflect and try to understand the deeper question and answer of sins. Students are doing that. Hopefully staff and leaders of universities are as well to differing extents.

The song that follows ‘Pompeii’ is called ‘Things we lost in the fire’ which obviously has nothing to do with anything here. Except everything.

Things we lost to the flame
Things we’ll never see again
All that we’ve amassed
Sits before us, shattered into ash
These are the things, the things we lost
The things we lost in the fire, fire, fire
These are the things, the things we lost
The things we lost in the fire, fire, fire
So maybe the movement should adopt the whole album.
We tend to think of things burnt up in fires as negative things, and certainly some of the fires have been just that. But also sometimes there are things that need to be burnt/destroyed/left behind, so that we can build new things in their place.
If these disruptive, painful and at times destructive marches/protests/engagements lead us to a better, stronger, more healthier education system in a year, five year’s, ten year’s time… then perhaps a bit of burning will have been a good thing.
The song continues:
we were born with nothing
And we sure as hell have nothing now
Some of the pain behind the #FeesMustFall movement is the notion that all people were created equal, but some of them were created more equal than others. Students failing to get access to study, those sleeping in libraries and on friend’s floors or bathroon floors cos of not being able to afford or gain access to housing, and graduates who can’t get access to their degrees to start finding jobs because of outstanding varsity fees…
And finally there is a call to hope, towards the end of the song:
Do you understand that we will never be the same again
Do you understand that we will never be the same again
The future’s in our hands and we will never be the same again
The future’s in our hands and we will never be the same again
Never being the same again can be a good thing or a bad thing. So much seems to hang on many meetings that are being held all around the country at the moment. Prayers and presence and listening and seeking to understand are all things we can offer so that in some small way we might be part of seeing a better future than many have experienced before.
Two resources to help those of you who are trying to understand how we can see the positives in all this mayhem are this piece i wrote on the dangers of Othering.

As well as this article by Asanda Ngoasheng which unpacks some of the poop for us in a really helpful way.

An extract from #FeesMustFall: Understanding the current shitstorm

“Another criticism of the protests has been the methods used, especially the burning of buildings and the use of raw human sewage. There has been a lot written on the burning buildings and why this is happening so I want to focus on the sewage. Last year, Chumani Maxwele threw raw sewage at the Rhodes statue and this started what became known as the #RhodesMustFall movement. This year students protesting at Cape Peninsula University of Technology disrupted a meeting and threw human faeces.

While many were demonising students and calling them racist and other insulting words for using faeces in protest – I was wondering how students were able to interact with human waste at such close proximity without gagging and abandoning their cause. In thinking about this I realised that students’ relationship with shit would be this way because many of them come from homes in the Western Cape where there is no proper sanitation. The province continues to use a bucket system which forces residents of all ages to interact with human waste in a manner very different to people with flush toilets.

Students from these impoverished communities spend their lives using the bucket system, cleaning bucket system toilets and living in and around the stench of human waste as the toilets are usually in close proximity to their homes (shacks). The throwing of poo becomes an effective protest method because it brings the lived experiences of these students to the doorsteps of the privileged, by class or race.

The #FeesMustFall movement is about a lot more than just fees that need to fall and the call for free education. They are also about enlightening those who are not black or poor to the pain of being black and poor in South Africa, and sadly most of us have long closed our ears.”

Asanda Ngoasheng