Pedagogy of Struggle
In October 2015, 10000 university students gathered at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital, to demand the scrapping of proposed fee increases and the insourcing of workers. #FeesMustFall (FMF), the banner adopted, unifie
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17. PEDAGOGY OF STRUGGLE #OutsourcingMustFall
INTRODUCTION
In October 2015, 10000 university students gathered at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital, to demand the scrapping of proposed fee increases and the insourcing of workers. #FeesMustFall (FMF), the banner adopted, unified protests initially directed against apartheid-like practices such as language policies and colonial symbols at historically white universities. At its height, FMF demonstrated the potential to unite the decade-long, often militant but uncoordinated student protests against academic and financial exclusions mainly at historically black universities. It was the FMF’s economic demands – no fee increases – that enabled it to grow into a national movement that forced the government to concede. This demand united the majority of students – the poorest, the ‘missing middle’1 – and attracted the sympathies of wealthier students. FMF not only temporarily halted fee increases, but secured in-principle agreements to scrap the outsourcing of workers at some historically white universities – a practice that was embedded in the restructuring of higher education rooted in the neoliberal economic policy, Growth Employment and Redistribution, adopted in 1996 by the African National Congress (ANC)-led government. As fresh protests broke out a year later following the announcement of fee increases that will be capped at eight per cent for the 2017 academic year, the threat to student unity is posed by differentially applied increases. Students are demanding free education while government has exempted poor students who are recipients of its loan scheme, excluding the ‘missing middle’ for whose funding government is appealing to the private sector. Having learned the lessons of FMF in 2015, the government appears to be much more prepared for a prolonged struggle which, at the time of writing, had resulted in the shutdown of a number of institutions. Whether the students have learned the lessons of the 2015 FMF struggle to not only build and sustain their unity but to draw upon the support of wider layers of workers will become clearer in the next period. The main aim of this chapter is to demonstrate through the example of a campaign among outsourced workers, mostly not organised under unions, the educational potential and willingness of workers to struggle against exploitation and social A. von Kotze & S. Walters (Eds.), Forging Solidarity, 181–192. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
s. hAMILTON
injustice when there is effective political influence and leadership. I argue, firstly, that the form of solidarity which existed between workers and students during FMF was an expression of ‘class’ solidarity and provided a firm basis upon which to cut across divisions that later emerged among students. Secondly, I argue that a key aspect of building ‘class’ solidarity is to re-establish the authenticity of the ‘traditional forms of knowledge’ of the working class (Sawchuk, 2007), the core ideas of which are based o
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