The recent news report is from the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) in collaboration with the program for children’s education called the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Program’s (AAPDEP) Marcus Garvey Youth Program. We write this to win the black working class parents to recognize the suffering of their children in these colonial institutions as well as to bring about an understanding between them and the youth of the main cause of the contradiction—the colonial mode of production.
In recent South African TV, scores of black youth in high-schools were shown lined up single file with their hands to the wall as police searched them during school hours. This has not been given enough criticism even by the parents of the children because of the media’s role in making it seem like African children are criminals that deserve to be harassed and beaten as a form of education.
Gauteng’s department of education stats
It is reported that there are 2,200 schools within Gauteng province, and that of these, 200 are noted as “safety risks” according to the department of education itself. Although this can be seen as a tiny contradiction, one must understand the nature of South African schools and their relationship to the African community.
According to Lebogang Maile, Gauteng’s Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Education and Sports, Arts, Culture and Recreation, a budget of R71 billion (South African Rand) in Ekurhuleni (which accounts for most of Johannesburg east as well as Pretoria aka Tshwane) has been allocated towards the institutions of education in this country. Of that, R165 million is spent on what they call school patrollers.
Maile has said that R54 billion alone has been spent on salaries. The math behind the statistics he is offering is interesting to calculate and is a testimony about the kind of priorities his government has in relation to African people.
Colonial attitudes towards our African children
What the school patrollers are to African students in these high-schools is what the police are to our community—colonial enforcers, who come to terrorize the people into acting “right” or “civilized.” If one has not seen South African treatment of black people in these prisons that they call schools, it would be hard to describe the experience. But if you ask any black youth out there, they will tell you that it feels like they are hated by the principals, the teachers and the school itself just for being born.
No one understands what African children are going through—being physically beaten for incorrect answers or not understanding the colonial curriculum and its foreign language of instruction.
Maile, however, has said on television that he believed that this was the correct usage of government funds—policing our black children because they are “monsters” after all. But the cold reality staring us in the face is that these schools in the ghetto are a reflection of the ghettoized situation within which we, African people, are daily forced to endure, with constant structural, political and physical violence as a way of counterinsurgency.
The MEC claims that the government has a research team, but then the question we must ask is whether the organization he speaks of views black people as human beings who deserve to be self-determining. The answer is no. South Africa has never seen our people as anything other than a liability at best. This is why corporal punishment is legal if the children are African or in the ghetto.
This is an issue that is not limited to high schools. In primary schools, African children are forced to carry ALL books to school 90 percent of the time for a lousy reason—that if their teachers are absent, others who may not have a class that day may take over and teach their own subjects. This disregard for our children’s health has seen our children, who walk for miles to school, carry 8-10 kilograms of weight on their backs!
Schools such as Chief Bambatha have constantly responded to our demand that they at least build locker rooms for children by saying that they do not have money to spend on such a need. Once again, our children are beastialized and subject to spinal degeneration as they grow into teenagers–which leads to problems in their reproductive health as they grow into adults. This too is a form of genocide.
Throwback to apartheid tactics regarding African children
The colonial school system was born in the process of crafting servants for the colonizer population and their kind of society. Therefore, it is no wonder that black children are constantly breaking school rules. This is something we do because we are resisting the dehumanization of being colonized. This means that, if anything, we need to applaud these children who stand against the status quo and invite them to the revolution instead of accepting the label that they are undesirables.
The report from the news revealed that the learners are about the age of 20 or more—something Maile talked about derisively, saying that these children should have finished school by now! Well, there is no way African children can finish school if it is irrelevant and draining for them. The fact that they are still there is a sign that, despite the reality, they are putting trust in this abusive and hateful colonial system. Perhaps this is because we are desperate as a people and do not know that we can and should organize our own education for our own fulfilment.
As this was occurring in the Johannesburg areas, we also have seen it all around Gauteng. Tafarie Mugeri, the Director of Organization for the African Socialist International for the Africa Region, has challenged it in his workplace, where police and their dogs were infiltrating the premises and terrorizing the children—no different than they did during apartheid.
If one has not seen how the schools operate in the townships, one need only to watch a movie called “Sarafina,” and remove all the fancy singing (and white cops with electric chairs), and then one shall have a clear view. Even in the present time, African children are clustered in classrooms. Whereas the legal number of students per class is supposed to be 15 (20 students being the limit), we see 50 or more students per class.
There has been no prioritization of creating a community-centered curriculum, much less buildings that can accommodate our children adequately.
Additionally, these schools function as a way of shaping Africa’s future to further submit to the colonial mode of production—conditioning students to live in fear of being whipped by their teachers as a way of disciplining them. Those foolish enough to argue that children have to be treated this way are quickly silenced when asked why the same measures are not applied to the white students. It is clear that this happens because of structural issues and less because of some pseudo-racial science.
Build the Uhuru Movement; defend African children
One of the best ways to combat the colonial genocide of our children is to start building black community programs that take in our children and guide them in any way that brings them closer to humanization.
Dr. Aisha Fields, the Director of the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project, visited Fochville last year and instructed African students on the duty of each of them in releasing Africa’s potential through participating as problem solvers in the community, not just in sterile classrooms.
She and Director Tafarie are some of the best examples of what African students can do if they develop a love for the people—to offer their skills as a way to solve our problems and build our confidence as a people and especially as a class.
In Evaton West, there is a return to AAPDEP’s program, the Marcus Garvey Youth Program—which is running as a way to politicize African students about how to practically apply the education they are acquiring at these prisons they call schools. African children are learning the connections between mathematics and the issues of consciousness and dialectics, along with martial arts, first aid and emotional intelligence.
While we may not be able to convince parents in the ghetto that the white power structure is killing their children’s consciousness, this is a start. In the near future, those children will reproduce this tactic in their own families and we will start to see a further cementing of African Internationalist education.
Join the Marcus Garvey Youth Program wherever you are. Support the work of Director Tafarie in building branches all over South Africa.
African children want freedom, not slavery and torture!
Free them all!
Down with South Africa’s school system!
Black Power!
