Achille Mbembe
7 October at 11:43 ·
A DEADLY FIGHT IN A TUNNEL
That it was going to end like this could have arguably been foreseen.
After arduous and protracted talks, a General Assembly was convened, during which a "pledge on access to higher education" was going to be read. The one-page document committed the University of the Witwatersrand to support the goal of "free, fully funded, quality, decolonised higher education". This was going to represent a very significant victory for the forces that have been pushing for this new dispensation for the last 18 or so months.
Whether in purely financial terms this is actually feasible remains to be seen. The Minister of Finance, for one, is skeptical. So are many other voices, not all of which are, by the way, opposed to the principle. Indeed, such it is in a democracy.
This morning, we are told that the General Assembly has been postponed. "One of the latest demands of the protesting students is that Wits and all other universities should be shut down until government agrees to free education", says the statement issued by the Senior Executive Team.
I happened to be on campus when the statement hit our screens. Where we go from here is perfectly unclear. A few lessons have nevertheless been harnessed during this new wave of protests.
First - the fight to keep the university open while prosecuting the struggle for free higher education (not for all, the rich included, but specifically "for the poor" ) has been lost, at least for the time being.
Presumably, one should assume, the two cannot be done simultaneously!
Second - neither the private security firms hired by the University, nor the South African police service have been able to help the State fulfil the basic functions of equal protection and security for all under the law.
It now appears that a relatively small, but well organised and highly determined number of militants, can severely frustrate institutional power to the extent of plunging the system itself into creeping dysfunctionality.
It also appears that under such conditions, the recourse to the law and to the courts to restore order and discipline is aleatory. Militants have shown remarkable skills at harnessing the resources of the law in order to further the project of disruption while at the same time avoiding to pay a heavy price for the latter.
When neither the law, nor repression are likely to extract compliance, then we know that the crisis is deep and the existing order (however democratic it may be) is in serious danger of unravelling. To maintain itself, it is exposed to the temptation (and conversely the risk) of resorting to increased levels of violence.
A few other lessons one can draw from the current wave of protest are the following.
One way of defeating a system that has not been able to crush protest in its incipient phase is to drag it into an endless process of pseudo-negotiations. In such an instance, turning in circles becomes a method. Goal posts keep changing. Commitments are made but are constantly reneged. Leaders keep changing and almost everything has to start anew. And most significantly, demands that are made cannot, in principle, be satisfied because those to whom they are made simply do not have the mandate, the power, the authority or the means to satisfy them.
Such is the case with the demand for 'free education" when it is put to the university rather than to government.
There is not one single South African VC who can satisfy this demand. The politics of "impossible demands" is a key feature of the politics of viscerally that is so dominant in our times.
An "impossible demand" is one of those demands that are wilfully made to the wrong authority in the full knowledge that the latter will never be able to satisfy it, and therefore the conflict can never end.
It turns politics into a zero-sum game, a deadly fight in a tunnel.
Where do we go from here?
If indeed the militants' goal is to shut down the universities "until government agrees to free education", then they can score a comprehensive victory in this first round provided they stick with - or intensify - the strategy of disruption that has served them so well so far, in a context in which neither the law nor repression have been able to stifle their determination.
Once the universities have been effectively shut down, they will face an entirely different set of challenges. They will be left face to face with government (which, they seem to realise, is the ultimate decider of whether or not "free education" is written into a fact).
There is no way to know in advance what the government might do when faced, unmediated, to the current wave of protesters. If it comes to a real fight, militants will definitely need to bring in bigger numbers. They will be forced to search for coalitions.
University authorities, on the other hand, are not short of options. The most potent option, paradoxical as it is, is to take the lead and either to "close" or to "shut" down the university.
It looks as if "closing down" and "shutting down" do not carry the same legal implications. But in the "take no-prisoners" kind of fight in a tunnel they are locked in, taking the lead and setting/closing the university allows them to pull the rug from under the feet of the militants.
Depending on whether the shutting/closing down implies vacating the dormitories, stopping the payment of monthly salaries or the delivery of other services or not, such a move might force the kind of "radical clarification" long days and nights of "turning in circles" have not produced.
The State, which so far has been playing ping-pong with the universities will be forced to face the issue. Other protagonists who, so far, have found it harder to be counted will have to stand up and be counted.
The hope is that it won't come to this. Indeed it needs not coming to this. But it might well end up coming to this.
