Vuyisile Msila
We would like to believe that we cannot simply say that our institutions of higher learning are failing at fairness.
We also hope that it would be inaccurate to generalise that black dignity is undermined as dehumanisation proliferates.
Additionally, we hope that higher education institutions are not in existence to create products who are perennially suspicious, timid and scared of whiteness and storming white privilege. But hope is just that, hope.
Two weeks ago the world, especially the black world, reeled with shock yet again, as a white student peed on a fellow black student’s computer and reading material at Stellenbosch University.
Then again we pondered a little, and as usual, were traumatised and bewildered that such things happen in our institutions.
But then I was reminded that we never listened to the “Luister” actors.
Additionally, we cared less about the beasts who served urine-soaked meat to black workers at the University of the Free State.
These barbaric acts of disgust and blatant racism continue to humiliate the black world. The paradox of them all is that they happen at places that are supposed to be sacrosanct; places of higher knowledge, enlightenment and wisdom.
Misapprehension raises a number of questions as we try to understand the calamity. When institutions of higher learning are transforming as they have been for some time now – what are they transforming? What does the peeing debacle portend for the future? Will the black always be treated with this repugnance? What kind of intellectuals are we nurturing in these black students?
It is so gruesome when we are breeding intellectuals of disgust whose major theories are based on unleashing their bodily fluids to drive home barbaric points of grandeur. Our future has become this foul and messier.
That very week, we resuscitated our skills of solving similar race problems as we identified the banal solutions as we usually do; we were talking about the much needed but elusive reconciliation.
More like concealing the real problems under the sand.
We were looking forward to the white dad meeting the black dad so that they could shake hands, case closed. How thoughtful!
Few mentioned the desperate help needed by the budding leaking intellectual and even less talked about the potential lifetime damage caused to the black student.
We did not ask pertinent questions, and this is exactly what happened with the “Luister” incident; for that one too faded into the doldrums of history; it simply never happened.
We totally forgot about the Free State incident as we merely moved on.
After all, we always want to march on and forget troubling tales of any gruesome things.
But it escapes us that in blindly moving on as in this case, we escape reality and continue engendering docile future black intellectuals whose claim is simply nothingness.
We continue saying even silently, that odious racial privileges should thrive even when based on cultures of dominance.
Our world has become so perilous and complex for as we try to understand the role of the university we witness its imposing unwavering dissonance in Africa.
A place supposed to be an abode of free thinking and abundant with ideas has become so debased as black dormitory rooms transform into makeshift toilets for rotten brats inebriated with privilege and entitlement.
Dé jà vu? Seems like we’ve been here before.
The question of race in campuses continues to be a conundrum.
Decades ago Steve Biko revealed a few challenges experienced by black students in historically white campuses, and years later similar challenges still emerge frequently.
These challenges now show vividly the mind boggling truth; the more institutions transform the more they remain the same.
Back in 1973, the intellectual Chabani Manganyi wrote about the unfortunate experience of the complex “drama” of being-black-in-the-world.
The state of being black attracts these absurdities, dehumanisation, indignities now as some eye the black faces in lecture halls, they see personification of lavatories.
How poignant can this be! How nauseating! Does this mean that black degradation is inescapable? Are black people eternal victims? There is something more to being-black-in-the-world.
The drama never stopped for even today, the black students are on their own.
Manganyi’s contention still makes sense, being-black-in-the-world has so many tales to reveal, much more in institutions of higher learning.
There are many surprises awaiting hundreds of black young people in the world of work and the black higher education students registered for various courses may think that the careers they follow would better their chances in life, thus enabling them to escape the zones of non-being. They may think that the cum laudes that some will achieve will redeem them from the world of pseudo heroes whose armour is piss and loathing.
Yet Frantz Fanon speaks of epidermal character of race. The sophistication of the black person may not help, for there is no escape from the epidermal skin. Black students will have a better future if they not only understand their world but also have the fortitude to transform it. And this is an ongoing struggle where institutions of higher learning should take part.
Steve Biko, like Fanon before him, envisioned a black world where people retain their ego and humanity. In fact, Black Consciousness still fights for black humanisation that is to oppose epidermalisation thus bringing back the life, identity and character of the black person.
There is no worst discrimination than what happened in Babalo’s room for this demonstrates the reason why the black identity needs to be revived continuously because such incidents demonstrate that black people frequently find themselves shoved into an inferno where anti-black racism brutalises them.
And there is no other way to describe this. In fact, Black Consciousness came about because black people saw there is a conscious need to oppose any forms of anti-black racism as people search for the zone of being.
Intellectuals such as Giroux maintain that students should be encouraged to study accounts of race relations which challenge “the liberal view of black/white relations” they believe conceal the underlying ideology and existence of racial power relations.
This would also include institutions highlighting teaching students approaches that would demonstrate how various media entrench existing forms of authority. In addressing cultural racism, universities should always facilitate debate for students to be conscious of how to challenge the ills that may support ethnocentrism, racism and other forms of hatred.
We should all condemn such disgusting acts because higher education institutions ought to be at the centre of entities that lead the society’s transformation.
As long as institutions give room for cultural racism, we have huge challenges for our all-encompassing transformation agenda. These acts have implications for recognition of black thought and pedagogy that recognises a variety of knowledge. Every day we realise how racial equity escapes our world.
The battles against unchanging institutional cultures will not subside until cultural racism embedded in institutional racism is addressed. Attempts at transformation will come to naught if these are not addressed consciously.
In several higher education institutions, covert cultural racism has been used to oppose various agendas including the decolonisation and Africanisation of the academy. One would hope this incident is not a microcosm of many similar incidents that never surface. There are definitely many other ways that whiteness pees on the black world.
Again, we hope that the current student who was a victim will never be intimidated by racist demons which rear their heads in institutions of higher learning in various guises. And such problems are not maladies of one institution, for generally our world is still wrestling with our past.
It will be a great pity if several role-players are unable to tackle all forms of racism and barbarity in higher education. This pee warrior is an obvious case, but we should be concerned even more by the silent ones who continue with racist tendencies in the background.
Our institutions of higher learning should not fail young people and the country by nurturing leaking intellectuals. They should not fail at fairness by letting privileged rascals thwart some people’s journeys. The university in any country is supposed to be a beacon of hope for the future, yet reactionaries and racists from all corners kill those optimisms.
Msila works at Unisa. He writes in his personal capacity.