Hi comrades I want to state it from the very onset that I am not a Julius Malema's fan. I really disagree with a number of statements that have been made by Malema in the media. I think his approach to politics is not advancing the interest of the South African youth but that is debate for another day.
On the other hand, I do think though that those who are socialists and activists should not fall into the trap of the petty bourgeois elements, the analysts of the bourgeois order and the mass media. During our dark of the struggle, formal education and qualifications were always taken with a pinch of salt. We knew that in general formal education was there to serve the interest of the apartheid capitalist system. Our approach was to go to the school and use them as a site of struggle. Of course, we studied and got formal qualification but individual qualifications and certificates were not glorified. If you read a popular pamphlet issues by students of 1976 called, "To town, To Ellof", you will notice that for them the certificate was the struggle. We had a lot of comrades who did not have all these formal qualifications but they performed better politically. In many cases, these comrades were sharper than those who had university qualification. The struggle was their school. In fact, their education was what we call popular education which was based on collective learning and sharing of experiences. These were grassroots intellectuals or what Gramsci would call organic intellectuals. A number of these comrades were shop stewards, student leaders and so on. In fact, these comrades were able to debate with professors and academics. These comrades ran their own study circles and read the Learning Nation of the then New Nation. The mass movement and the struggle gave these comrades education. . Today, we are faced with a situation where certain petty bourgeois elements want to judge us on the basis of our grammar, pronunciation, certificates and even matric results. In other words, it is only those who have masters degree who are entitled to public opinions. We must never forget that the apartheid system never provided the black working class children with proper education. Even today, it is the kids of the middle class and the ruling class who are able to excel in formal education because they have all the material support from their parents. Over the past few days, I witnessed a very painful and a touching incident in Freedom Park, the South of Johannesburg. I had gone for a meeting there. There was a working class kid at the meeting. He is probably three years old but he could not hold the pen properly. Now if you were to compare that with middle class and upper class kids, what do you get? The kids from better family backgrounds at that age are starting to read and write. They even speak English fluently. They are exposed to computers. Now we can see right from the beginning that this working class kid is unlikely to compete with the kids of the middle classes. I have worked with a lot of good comrades who do not have matric results. Do I then undermine these comrades just because they never matriculated? I think that would be reactionary and backward on my part. I have to confess that these comrades sometimes perform political tasks much better than the certificate-wielding petty bourgeois elements. Yours in the struggle for the total emancipation of the working class Mondli Hlatshwayo 0843773003 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [EMAIL PROTECTED] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [EMAIL PROTECTED] . -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
