The
Johannesburg
People’s Pride Movement stands in solidarity with
students across the nation demanding the transformation of universities and
removing the principal barrier to accessing higher education: the exorbitant
cost.
Thousands
of young people across all of South Africa are being denied the right and
opportunity to education in order to be able to have full citizenship in the
global knowledge society. In the same ways that queer people are deliberately
pushed to and kept in the margins, poor people (who are overwhelmingly mostly
Black as a direct result of our colonial-apartheid past and present) are also
being kept in the margins to maintain the pervasive structural and material
inequalities that characterise our society today.
We
applaud the courage, discipline and singularity of purpose with which students
have been engaged in our collective struggle for the fundamental transformation
of our universities and society. Failed by the State and universities, students
have shown great leadership in demonstrating that people’s power can effect the
change we deserve to see in our society.
We
condemn the contempt with which students making legitimate demands for
long-overdue solutions are being treated by the State and universities alike.
We condemn the use of State force and violence to prevent our right to assemble
and protest and disrupt oppressive systems of power. So soon after the Marikana
Massacre, and with the enduring memory of the Sharpeville Massacre, it was
simply chilling to watch the South African Police Force shoot
at students engaged in peaceful protest in
Port Elizabeth. We, further, specifically condemn UCT’s fascist resort to interdicting
students and staff from organising, assembling
and protesting, and encourage all students to make a mockery of this outlandish
and unconstitutional court order by continuing to organise peaceful protest
actions under the #FeesMustFall banner.
They
cannot detain all of us under this unjust and unconstitutional manipulation of
the law.
We
celebrate the citizen journalists everywhere, especially The Daily Vox, for
providing nuanced
and critical coverage of this momentous uprising
for justice, filling the vacuum left by the mainstream media’s generally
disdainful and ambivalent attitude towards this important struggle and the
young people leading it.
We
call on all our partners, supporters and all of us in the margins who have a
stake in the transformation of our universities to show their support for our
progressive student movements.
- We call on you to participate in student political actions happening near you, because their struggle is our struggle and our struggle is theirs.
- We call on you to send messages of solidarity and support.
- We call on you to provide support to the various student movements leading this necessary work, in money and in kind, to continue this revolution, for theirs is the long-overdue work of decolonisation in action.
- We call on you to provide financial support to The Daily Vox to enable its citizen journalists to continue their excellent coverage of this important work being driven by students.
Queer
people cannot be free unless higher education is free for all who want it. None
of us can be free, unless all of us are free.
Sithi
phambili, ngabafundi, phambili!
Issued By:
Organising Committee: Johannesburg People’s Pride Movement
For
further information, contact:
Kwezilomso
Mbandazayo
Sekoetlane
Phamodi