‘Dreams’ ~ Mary Tiller

I thank you for dreams, they really come through. Dreams, when they are sent from you. Dreams, whoever would believe when you dream the impossible dream. Oh dreams, whoever would believe that I dreamed all of this.

 

Looking behind the curtain : the chronicles of an international exchange student

The Honeymoon phase is, indeed, dead and reality has settled in. My time here has revealed the spit beneath the shine of Stellenbosch. This town is a haven of sorts. It’s very European and “safe.” In fact, it feels like I could still be in the States. However, there are race dynamics at play here of which I couldn’t begin to scratch the surface. The biggest indicator that there is something awry is the fact that while the Western Cape is made up of 80% Blacks and Coloureds (a number that roughly matches each of the bigger cities within the Western Cape, including Stellenbosch), Stellenbosch University has less than 30% Blacks and Coloureds.

There is both institutional and very personal racism prevalent here.

I have a professor, who shall go unnamed, but suffice it to say he teaches history, that I believe is very much part of the problem. He is an Afrikaner and upholds all traditional Afrikaner beliefs. I don’t recall if I gave a very clear picture of what “Afrikaner” means, but if I didn’t, I’ll do it briefly now. Afrikaners are descendants from the (White) dutch that colonized South Africa. They speak Afrikaans (something I will be getting into in a moment). They intermixed mostly with Germans and French that came to the country, though some also have west-African slave ancestry. Their conflicts with the British are similar to those the British had with people in the American colonies. It would take me much too long to really get into the history of the Afrikaner people, but I will say that there is a history of contention between them and indigenous peoples (mostly those that are Black and Coloured) that has lessened but it still present today. Back to my point though, is that this professor is the most insidious type of racist there is, the kind that doesn’t think he’s racist. And he teaches history. To people who aren’t from South Africa and will believe just about anything he says about it. In an aggravating conversation I had with him, we debated the value of the Affirmative Action system and he calmly told me that the reason it should be done away with was because people of color were lazy and couldn’t do any of their jobs right. He is one of (presumably; I haven’t taken classes from EVERY professor) several lecturers on campus that promote this kind of thinking and inhibit the growth of equality in a country that needs it very much.

An extract from the chronicles of an international exchange student.

Source: http://samcoug.blogspot.com/2010/09/looking-behind-curtain.html

Press Release: Black Management Forum Western Cape’s response to unjust practices faced by black students at Stellenbosch University campus

The Black Management Forum Western Cape Provincial Committee would like to express its disappointment in the prevailing ill-treatment of black students at the Stellenbosch University campus. Some of the key elements of democracy are that, it transformed our society into a purposeful state and seeks to mend the racial divides that are still prevalent in our communities, workplaces, institutions of higher learning to mention but three.

The recent incidents that took place at the Stellenbosch University Students Parliament gathering held on 5 October 2010:

1. The Madam Speaker (Helen van Tonder) advising that the medium of instruction will be both in English and Afrikaans and further suggested that all non-Afrikaans students make use of translation sets. If one does not have a set – she/he will have to ask his/ her neighbour to translate
2. A suggestion by Mr Poole (from the Stellenbosch Community Policing Forum) that ‘in order to avoid being mistaken for a criminal, black students must carry their student cards in and out of campus at all times’.

In our view as the Black Management Forum Western Cape, these are rather unfortunate tendencies that strongly divide our society further-apart. For the country to move forward blindly as if nothing had happened would have been suicidal and stupid! We therefore demand that there should not be any language that is given much preference over another in our institutions of higher learning and rather universities stick to English as a medium of instruction, which is universal and spoken throughout the world. The living conditions of black students in Stellenbosch and on campus are steadily worsening and becoming unbearable. The financial budget as reported by the SRC Chairperson (Jan Greyling) which he strictly presented in Afrikaans made provisions for millions of rands to be spent on parking space and purchase of new economic bicycles and not a single word was said about financial assistance for students coming from the poorest and most hard-hit sections of our communities which are primarily black students.

The Black Management Forum Western Cape also condemns the suggestion by Mr Poole from the Stellenbosch Community Policing Forum, that black students should carry their student cards in and out of campus so as to avoid being mistaken for a criminal. This is such an insane and barbaric suggestion to have ever hit the student fraternity in the post-democratic era in our land. Black students also have a right to decide for themselves whether or not to carry their student cards in or outside the campus. They therefore cannot and deserve not to be subjected to a policy that is similar to a Pass Law which the majority of the paeople of South Africa fought tirelessly against. It is therefore against this background that we as the Black Management Forum Western Cape has decided to give a death blow to this discriminatory suggestion by Mr Poole, a suggestion that is designed to hinder black student’s progress at Stellenbosch University and thus injure their human dignity and mental capacity.

The BMF is a non – racial, thought leadership organisation founded in 1976 with the aim of influencing socio-economic transformation in our country and pursuit of socio – economic justice, fairness and equity. The BMF will continue to be vocal on these aforementioned matters and therefore encourages participation of the broader South African stakeholders.

The organisation stands for the development and empowerment of managerial leadership primarily amongst black people within organisations and the creation of managerial structures and processes which reflect the demographics and values of the wider society. The Black Management Forum Western Cape is willing to engage the University of Stellenbosch on any transformational matters.

Thank you

For more info please contact:

Mrs. Natalie Khambi

Deputy Chairperson

Black Management Forum Western Cape

021 419 2913

073 230 3026

info@bmfwc.org.za

19 October 2010

Waging war on the dompas – An update

There are number of developments in the pipeline:

1. Brigadier N. Mene, Stellenbosch Police Station Head will be coming to campus to address us later this week. Among the issues to be discussed is the establishment of Student Policing Forum comprising of Maties, USBD and Stellenbosch Police Officers which will be head by Colonel Govender. Being trend-setters this is first such initiative in the country, the goal is to establish  cordial relations with Security Establishment to better enhance our safety
2. Also in attendance will be Mr. Lourens Le Roux of the USBD who after some fruitful consultation agreed to look into the re-establishment of the scrapped Student Patrol guards which will mean that students will be intimately involved in their own safety issues.

This will take place on 19 October 2010(Tuesday) at 13:00 on Cinema hall Neelsie on the ground floor, next to the travel agency.

Sandile Ngobeni,

Branch Secretary (SASCO Stellenbosch)

“Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.” –Nelson Mandela, Inaugural  address 10 May 1994.

Hitler’s Forgotten Black Holocaust Victims

Like many West European nations, Germany established colonies in Africa in the late 1800s in what later became Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, and Tanzania.

German genetic experiments began there, most notably involving prisoners taken from the 1904 Heroro Massacre that left 60,000 Africans dead, following a 4-year revolt against German colonisation. After the crushing defeat Germany received in World War I, it was stripped of its African colonies in 1918.

As a spoil of war, the French were allowed to occupy Germany in the Rhineland – a bitter fought piece of land that has gone back and forth between the two nations for centuries. The French willfully deployed their own colonised African soldiers as the occupying force.

Germans viewed this as the final insult of World War I, and, soon thereafter, 92% of them voted in the Nazi party.

Hundreds of the African Rhineland-based soldiers intermarried with German women and raised their children as Black Germans. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote about his plans for these “Rhineland Bastards”. When he came to power, one of his first directives was aimed at these mixed-race children.

Underscoring Hitler’s obsession with racial purity, by 1937, every identified mixed-race child in the Rhineland had been forcibly sterilized, in order to prevent further “race polluting”, as Hitler termed it.

Hans Hauck, a Black Holocaust survivor and a victim of Hitler’s mandatory sterilisation program, explained in the film “Hitler’s Forgotten Victims” that, when he was forced to undergo sterilisation as a teenager, he was given no anaesthetic.?Once he received his sterilisation certificate, he was “free to go”, so long as he agreed to have no sexual relations whatsoever with Germans.

Although most Black Germans attempted to escape their fatherland, heading for France where people like Josephine Baker were steadily aiding and supporting the French Underground, many still encountered problems elsewhere. Nations shut their doors to Germans, including the Black ones.

Some Black Germans were able to eke out a living during Hitler’s reign of terror by performing in Vaudeville shows, but many Blacks, steadfast in their belief that they were German first, Black second, opted to remain in Germany. Some fought with the Nazis (a few even became Lutwaffe pilots)!

Unfortunately, many Black Germans were arrested, charged with treason, and shipped in cattle cars to concentration camps. Often these trains were so packed with people and (equipped with no bathroom facilities or food), that, after the four-day journey, box car doors were opened to piles of the dead and dying.

Once inside the concentration camps, Blacks were given the worst jobs conceivable. Some Black American soldiers, who were captured and held as prisoners of war, recounted that, while they were being starved and forced into dangerous labour (violating the Geneva Convention), they were still better off than Black German concentration camp detainees, who were forced to do the unthinkable-man the crematoriums and work in labs where genetic experiments were being conducted.

As a final sacrifice, these Blacks were killed every three months so that they would never be able to reveal the inner workings of the “Final Solution”.

In every story of Black oppression, no matter how we were enslaved, shackled, or beaten, we always found a way to survive and to rescue others. As a case in point, consider Johnny Voste, a Belgian resistance fighter who was arrested in 1942 for alleged sabotage and then shipped to Dachau. One of his jobs was stacking vitamin crates. Risking his own life, he distributed hundreds of vitamins to camp detainees, which saved the lives of many who were starving, weak, and ill-conditions exacerbated by extreme vitamin deficiencies. His motto was “No, you can’t have my life; I will fight for it.”

According to Essex University’s Delroy Constantine-Simms, there were Black Germans who resisted Nazi Germany, such as Lari Gilges, who founded the Northwest Rann – an organisation of entertainers that fought the Nazis in his home town of Dusseldorf – and who was murdered by the SS in 1933, the year that Hitler came into power.

Little information remains about the numbers of Black Germans held in the camps or killed under the Nazi regime. Some victims of the Nazi sterilisation project and Black survivors of the Holocaust are still alive and telling their story in films such as “Black Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust”, but they must also speak out for justice, not just history.

Unlike Jews (in Israel and in Germany), Black Germans receive no war reparations because their German citizenship was revoked (even though they were German-born). The only pension they get is from those of us who are willing to tell the world their stories and continue their battle for recognition and compensation.

After the war, scores of Blacks who had somehow managed to survive the Nazi regime, were rounded up and tried as war criminals. Talk about the final insult! There are thousands of Black Holocaust stories, from the triangle trade, to slavery in America, to the gas ovens in Germany. We often shy away from hearing about our historical past because so much of it is painful; however, we are in this struggle together for rights, dignity, and, yes, reparations for wrongs done to us through the centuries. We need to always remember so that we can take steps to ensure that these atrocities never happen again.

Source: CodeEmphasis (c) 2010. Original text available here.

..so the discourse continues

I think that insignificant somebody fails to grasp the gravity of the matter.

He must be informed that this is no laughing matter

We are not fools and that must be made clear

You need not to be a rocket scientist to put one plus one together.

“Facts?”

The Fact is that an irresponsible statement was made

It was made clear that black students must carry those things.

It is also now clear that that insignificant somebody subscribes to that view.

Let it be said that the same human person must be told to go play with himself.

If his brothers are the ones harassing people, they will be on the receiving end

convey the message in that case

 

Be informed that law is read, known and understood

We know what we are talking about

It cannot be that insignificant individuals still think inferiority complex still exists

The Tyrant of the majority cannot be celebrated

History as read, told and understood is clear.

 

Gone are the days of muteness from the “Natives” as they are referred to.

The majority is not the custodian of oxygen

The majority does not excrete bread, meat or even wine for that matter

 

Mutual coexistence is the telos we seek

The dignity of the human person is what is advocated for

Justice as in fairness (as explained by John Raws) is the goal

Issue of equity and inequality is the end result

2010 and the future is the basis of thought contestation.

 

I remain,

 

Job Shipululo Amupanda

 

Meet the SRC Chairperson of modern Dompasland

Courtesy of Vryematie

Perhaps he has been silent about the dompas, for  nearly 36 hrs now,  because he is finding the Joe Slovo -Van Zyl Slabbert – Beyers Naudé voice within himself and hopefully fighting the Jan Smuts -Verwoerd-Vorster-Jaap Marais demon that has enshrined him with power. So, Comrade Greyling, the Great Mandela once said “Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that generation”.

Considering that it was his sweat and blood that contributed to  Stellenbosch University  housing the democracy flag,  do spare a building for his legacy.  Or a park, or  brigde or toilet.  Something!

Press Release – An outcry against the adoption of the dompas system at Stellenbosch University

Press Release

07 October 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact : Motlalepula Musina

Nathan Adonis, Thobile Ntaka, Lungi Dali

15466469@sun.ac.za

We draw the public’s attention  to the issue of racial profiling at this institution. This issue reached a boiling point at a Student Parliament gathering held on Tue 5 Oct Oct 2010. Student parliament is an open forum for all Stellenbosch University students to engage in discussion about matters tabulated in the agenda. This agenda is drawn up and distributed by the Student Parliament Committee. This occurs once a term and for this term the Van Der Sterr Geboue was the venue where the following items were on the agenda:

–   Election of Speaker 2011

–   Feedback from the SRC Chairperson Jan Greyling

–   Student fees

–   Student safety and SAPS

When the meeting commenced, the current Madam Speaker of the House Helene van Tonder, advised there will be a 50-50 Eng/Afr medium and suggested that all non-Afrikaans speakers use the services of a translator. That service consisted of 24 translation sets for the entire parliament. For those that did not get one of those sets, the Madam Speaker asked that the non-Afrikaans speaker ask his/her neighbour to translate.

It is most absurd, that for a forum that is supposed to include and engage all students – undergraduate and post-graduate, local and international, is held in Afrikaans by default. This is despite the fact that the University’s Policy on language stipulates that a postgraduate student will be catered for in English and that is a requirement for international students to pass an English literacy test before being accepted into the university.

–   Election of Speaker 2011

A concern was raised about the legitimacy of student parliament. Since its inception, the student parliament has been operating without a Constitution. The basis of the argument was that it is the Constitution that will guide the electoral process, and stipulates role of the Speaker. Madam Speaker van der Tonder informed that this document was still being drafted and would be ready by early 2011. A suggestion was made that the elections be postponed until the document if finalized. Madam Speaker van der Tonder did not have the power to make that decision and would need to consult the SRC. However, since the matter was part of this agenda, the election would continue as scheduled.

–   Feedback from the SRC and Student fees

SRC Chairperson Jan Greyling gave feedback on the state of his negotiations with University Management. This was a follow up on a report given by the University Management on 21 September 2010, where student fees for 2011 were projected to increase by 12% for tuition and 15% for residence. Greyling used a PowerPoint presentation to help visualise and engage the house. His presentations did not abide to the 50-50 language rule set out by the Madam Speaker. The financial figures and table were strictly in Afrikaans.

For the meeting held on 21 Sept and this student parliament, minutes of the meetings and their supporting material (ppt slides) are still not available for the student’s perusal. Without these documents it is very difficult to objectively critique their content against the discussion.

Greyling informed the house that University Management were willing to reduce the increase by a mere 1% for both tuition and residence. He then followed with a justification for the respective 11% and 14% increase.

• Parking – Since the university has a shortage of over 5000 parking spaces, R80mil would be spend over the next 5 years to build new parking facilities.
• Bicycles – R0.5mil will be used to purchase new bicycles. To adopt a greener model of living, a new model of anti-theft, durable, economic bicycles would be imported from Amsterdam. These bicycles will then be leased to students for the year.
• Maintenance
• Lectures salaries – to attract the best staff and maintain a high academic standard
• Inflation
• Rising electricity bills
• Property taxes

A question was raised about why parking and bicycles is so high on the priorities list, when there are loans and bursaries to consider. This is especially relevant since parking and bicycles are a luxury and education is a need. Moreover, parking and bicycles benefits only certain category of students, yet all students must bear the cost acquiring them. Greyling advised that the increase was justifiable but negotiation with University Management were still to continue.

–   Student safety and SAPS

Due to the rising number of crime incidents reported in and around campus, the University’s campus protection services and Stellenbosch SAPS were invited to shed some light on the matter. Mr Pool, the SAPS representative reinforced that safety is the responsibility of all students and that the entire community needs to work together to promote a secure environment.

A question about the persistent problem of racial profiling was raised with the SAPS. Their capacity to prosecute criminals and harassment of black students was too queried. Mr Pool did not have answers on why the police are failing to prosecute criminals. He advised that he would need to look at each case individually and thus cannot answer to that. On the issue of racial profiling Mr Poole informed that in order to avoid being mistaken for a criminal, the black students must carry their student cards in and out of campus at all times. There was no objection /explanation / clarification from neither the SRC Chairperson nor the Dean of Students present at the parliament.

In closing, the newly elected Speaker for 2011 was announced and the meeting was adjourned.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————-

 

Our dompas saga continues

Vuka darkie! Wakker op man!

This conversation was still going on at the time of this upload. I shall keep it as updated as humanly, technologically and INETKEYcally possible. Yes we ALL can. Just flood your facebook/twitter status with commentary. Even if it offends your classmates. You are not fighting them, you are fighting the system.

Stellenbosch University, change yourself first!

On September 21 2010,  13h00, concerned members of the student community of Stellenbosch University populated room 1028 of the GC Cilliers building for a meeting to discuss proposed 12-15% increase in student fees for 2011. Those that are well vested in the science of mathematics informed me that the increase means that one would probably have to pay an additional R 3 000.00 on their tuition fees and an additional R 3 000.00 on residence fees. The meeting was to ‘discuss’ but the ‘untranformed’ management representatives turned it into a meeting to inform the students. All of their presentations both verbal and non verbal (powerpoint presentations) were done in Afrikaans. As such, I thought the increament was only for those that speak in Afrikaans. I am was to discover later that it was indeed for everyone. Brief mention must be made that the SRC did make attempts for translation albeit insufficient devices. We had to rely on the translation of those that understand Afrikaans. The point here is that if the management representatives were transformed, they could have made slides in both Languages as was done by the SRC.

Upon my intervention and that of the colleaque, the Progressive SRC Chairperson, Cde. Jan Greyling came to our rescue and directed that management try to answer questions in English. In demostrating progressive revolutional leadership and to the suprise of many , Cde Jan Grying was able to answer the question asked in Zulu by a colleaque who also felt excluded. In their graphic and figures presentations, management failed dismally in justifying the increase. In fact they exhibited intellectaul laziness by just reaching out to an orthodix method of gaining income (increasing student). They have showed to us that other sources of income is only 3% hence indicating that management is doing little in generating income is indicated by the ‘other sources of income’. If really faced with difficulty, one could never resort to a ‘shock therapy’ situation of effecting pain at the same time but could gradually effecting pain to avoid students and paraents pocket to loose too much blood. I cannot be sure if management sought an intellectual opinion from our financial Academics or they are from ‘we know it all’ orthodox.

I need not  mention the amount of money invested in our ‘believe’ project, there you can draw your own conclusion. Project Hope of changing the world is a wonderful project, but the executioner’s axe (Fee increament) are impediments to this intellectaul emancipation.

At the conference held in Italy, March 23-24 2010, the Rector, Prof. Botman told the world that “we have turned the town of Stellenbosch and sorrounding areas into a living laboratory to pioneer new knowledge and create tangible hope for the less fortunate.” If the Rector is to address the world, we must advise him to remix the speech in Italy to that “We have turned the University of Stellenbosch into a living laboratory to pioneer new knowledge and create further opportunity for the affluent of university and systematically exclude the wretched of the earth.” If we put these state of affairs and our ‘changing the world project’ into perspective, we then realize that it is not really the world we must concentrate but rather concentrate on changing the world. It is devoid of rationality when a high school leaners is aspiring to assume presidecy of the UN National general Assembly in order to punish the unsrupulous market forces that has led to marke failures. We must address our issues first. In order to change the world, we must address issues such as the language policy beacuse the fact of the matter is that Afrikaans is merely spoken in two countries in the the world. We must first have a timeframe and directive on such matters. Its a contradiction in action, betray to a common concious and false conciousness. We must first change ourselves before attempting to change the world.

Having been found guilty of ‘treason and other high crimes’ and to face the executioners’ axe, King Charles I deliver’s his final words in his speech on the scaffold, January 30 1649. He comments “I shall be very little heard of anybody here…Indeed, I could hold my peace very well, if I did not think that holding my peace would make some men think that I did submit to the guilt, as well as to the punishment: but I think it is my duty to God first, and to my country, for to clear myself both as an honest man, and a good King and a good Christian. I shall begin first with my innocency. In troth I think it not very needful for me to insist upon this, for all the world knows that I never did begin a war with the two Houses of Parliament, and I call God to witness, to whom I must shortly make an account, that I never did intend for to incroach upon their privilages, they began upon me, it is the militia they began upon, they confess that the militia was mine, but they thought it fit for to have it from me”. As it is and as it appears, the sentence is already set, we are already condemned,  the decision have already been made and what is left is to deliver a student’s financial execution. As one of the condemned, it is therefore paramount that I offer my last last words even though I shall be very little heard of anyone here.

To start with, I owe the University as I write, I am studying at the mercy of the graceful members of this institution whom without I will be willowing in the mire. Given that background, its a sad thing to face an execution when all you want to get an opportunity to acquire knowledge for the betterment of indifidual lives, societies and Nation. We wait for the response of Management and thereafter a directive as the SRC Chair will deem it fit.

Job Shipululo Amupanda

Student activist, Stellenbosch University