“We as black people have decided that education is the privilege of those who can buy it; we have chosen to preserve an education system that kept black people oppressed,” said local education activist Nomalanga Mkhize.
“We as black people have decided that education is the privilege of those who can buy it; we have chosen to preserve an education system that kept black people oppressed,” said local education activist Nomalanga Mkhize.
She believes that education in South Africa is monopolised by the wealthy minority while the majority, mostly black people, are still being given an inferior education.
Talking at a recent lecture organised by the Rhodes University ANCYL branch in conjunction with the Sarah Baartman municipality (formerly Cacadu), Mkhize also insisted that free education does not imply revolutionary education and called for the removal of the tenders from the education system to improve it.
“The reason why we are in this crisis is because there are people who make money from it,” she said.
The theme of the Anton Lembede Memorial Lecture lecture was ‘Crisis in basic education and the role of the academia, private sector and government’.
ANCYL deputy secretary general Mosenogi Kenetswe called upon young people to take charge of the country, but said that inequalities in access to education and wealth make this difficult.
She proposed a number of changes to be made in South Africa to empower the youth including: Free education up until a person's first degree; compulsory national service for the youth to prepare them for the workplace; a job seekers grant for unemployed youth; and nationalisation to industrialise minerals mined in the country so that they are processed and polished within SA.
Kenetswe criticised trade union Cosatu for sleeping with the enemy and for being both a referee and a player in our economic system.
Referring to the Lonmin mining company disaster, she accused some ANC leaders of having shares in Lonmin. She cited this as a reason why police killed so many people at the protest; to protect the interests of the investors instead of the workers.
As for the man the lecture was held in honour of, Anton Lembede was the first ANCYL president in 1944. He died at the age of 33 and is known as one of the beacons of the youth league.
Rhodes history professor and provincial Executive Member of the ANC Julia Wells said that the words ‘he came, he saw, he conquered’ aptly summed up his life. “The youth of the 40s provided a prophetic voice and vision at the time when no one was at the forefront for creating space within the ANC,” Wells said.
