Cdes let us not respond to ghosts. ________________________________
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of sasco member Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 9:45 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [YCLSA Discussion] Re: What would Sphiwe Zuma say? Dalton I'm sorry but it is difficult to disclose my identity bcoz in this forum the trend has been that of marking the man and not the ideas. I sympathise with you comrade. I rather put my ideas upfront. Hope u get my point. On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 4:16 PM, Dalton Dan Gama <[email protected]> wrote: Cde SASCO member thank you for this real politics as you said, i have just one request for you. would you please register in this forum with your real name and initials because it is not fair for all of us who are also SASCO members to see other using our structure to write and equally worship their political menthors here in this forum. i am asking this as a young cde of the movement, not to spark any debate with you. Amandla!! On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 6:52 PM, sasco member <[email protected]> wrote: This is refreshing. Cn we discuss real issues for a while? Copyright SASCO website. Memorial Lecture on the Life and Legacy of our late President Cde Siphiwe Zuma delivered by the President David Maimela on Friday, 14 September 2007 at KK Papiyane. UKZN (Howard College) Of note, of intellectual pursuit, of organic leadership Distinguished Guests Fraternal Organisations Dear fellow members Dear comrades Today we remember our late President. President Siphiwe Zuma! 9/11 2002 goes down in the history of the student movement as a dark day. A day when our President; the 10 th President Cde Siphiwe Zuma passed on! This memorial lecture takes place three days after the commemorative day of his passing. It has been exactly 1 829 days since the death of our President. This year; he would have been 28 years old. This year we commemorate the Fifth Anniversary of his passing! Lawrence Siphiwe Zuma was born in 1979 (ironically the year of the birth of COSAS) in Newcastle Osizweni here in KwaZulu Natal. During his high school days he served in the ranks and became leader in the structures of COSAS and the ANCYL. He joined SASCO in his first year of study in 1997 and remained a member until his last day. He served in school and university choir, he was in the Student Christian Fellowship (SCF) in the then University of Natal Durban. He served in various governance structures at varsity including as President of the SRC in 2001 and thereafter, his organisation SASCO deployed him to serve the whole of the students of South Africa as President of the SAU-SRC; the predecessor of SAUS. In October 2002, at the former University of the North he was elected national President of SASCO after our disgraceful Belville Congress. In his development and activism in student politics; Cde Zuma was in the first place a student; a final year student of law; we are proud to announce. In this, he led the way in demonstrating in practice; the principle of academic excellence required of all members of SASCO! I personally remember Cde Zuma as an astute brilliant negotiator and of course he knew how to sing and he loved it; hence the nickname "Pavarotti". He dressed and presented himself like a young person, he socialised and he did so excellently. He was energetic, loud and he loved his debates! Three historic dates surround the life of Cde Zuma as he was affectionately known in the ranks of SASCO. He was born the same year as COSAS in 1979. He died a day before the death of Steven Bantu Biko who died 25 years earlier then; Biko is an icon in the liberation history of country and a symbol of excellent student leadership. Indeed his death coincides a year earlier, with the US bombings of 9/11 which has had a huge impact on the world. These dates are important to observe as they brought some changes here at home and abroad. They constitute a total sum of the interconnected world in which Cde Zuma lived and struggled. I'm neither a sangoma nor an astrologer; I won't attempt to interpret the irony embedded in these historic dates! We are here today to celebrate a life that was silenced so early and yet echoed through the living and the non-living in great depths. A voice that echoed through the hallowed corridors of student power. Yes, comrade Zuma died in the line of duty! With all of his youth life lived in student and youth politics; his dedication and commitment to serving the youth of South Africa is beyond question. No-one will dare rise to oppose us when we say: Cde Zuma was a youth leader of note; a dynamic student who posed difficult questions in search of solutions to the normal daily lives of his people . In this; Cde Zuma represented the best of traditions in our ranks; the progressive young intelligentsia that SASCO seeks to build! In his life journey; we can extract two facts. The first one is the fact that he served in almost all the structures of the Progressive Youth Alliance. Indeed Cde Zuma was an activist and member of COSAS, the ANCYL and SASCO. This qualifies him as an organic leader of the broad progressive youth movement in South Africa. The second one is the fact that he strove to ask difficult questions. He questioned the order of society and that of our education system. His baptism in the school of SASCO made him appreciate that; ours is the strategic objective to transform society in general and education in particular. He understood and articulated this perspective because he knew that in reality; he belonged to the community before he could be a student. In this regard I personally recall one of his favourite phrases: "if you serve the student; you serve the community!". Out of the entirety of his life and legacy I choose to speak about the two life facts about the person of Cde Zuma. In his intellectual pursuits, the one fact about his life; Cde Zuma once wrote in 2001 as SRC President whilst addressing a graduation ceremony at UND: "I'm not a student of Marx, but I always find pleasure in reading his classics. Marx demands that I have to acknowledge the dialectical inter-relationship existing between the calibre of a graduate that an institution can produce and the culture and traditions of that university. Are our universities, particularly historically white institutions ready or should I say willing and prepared to produce an African graduate? Are our campuses, specifically their attitudes, curriculum and culture bound to produce a well-rounded, universal African mind that can interpret and understand problems facing our continent and act accordingly to contribute to the resolution of such problems? I dreadfully fear and shamefully doubt it; that our institutions are ready for these challenges that are presented at the face of globalisation. Can our universities really produce for instance; a historian who will challenge and confront the colonial, racist oppressive history of Jan Van Riebeeck, John Vorster, Louis Botha and Andries Pretorius and rewrite it to account for the martyrs of our new order with academic ointment. You open a computer today you write Siphiwe Zuma it still asks you questions. You do spell check it says unknown". History (or rather the structure of society) as we all know, is a product of struggle and depending on the dominant ideas represented by the dominant social forces at a given moment; who go on to create institutions and processes after their image including ensuring that scientific research and new knowledge and discoveries of the human mindare conditioned to serve the interest of the dominant social forces and therefore, given this context, we want to argue today correctly so that, universities are also influenced directly by the structure of social relations and that this is a continuous struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed. For example, the status given to universities as being autonomous and enjoying academic freedom reflects the triumph of the liberal discourse both in society in general and higher education in particular. Academic freedom and institutional autonomy as currently articulated by both institutions and government is clearly reactionary and anti-transformation! What is it that Cde Zuma was trying to communicate to us besides merely being who he was: a youth leader of note; a dynamic student who posed difficult questions in search of solutions to the normal daily lives of his people! In the trail of his intellectual pursuits, the current leadership of SASCO continues to assert in the same manner that Cde Zuma would: "We hold that education is a socio-economic right and not a privilege. Our call for free education is consistent with our principle to increase access and transform the education system. Indeed it is consistent with the pursuit of the view we share with the ANC to ultimately establish a people's education for people's power (Atleast we want to assume that the ANC still holds this vision). And we believe this view is consistent with the provisions or at least the sentiments of the Freedom Charter. (2007 SASCO Policy Submission to the ANC on Education). This we believe could have made Cde Zuma proud that SASCO; the organisation that he served all his varsity life; the organisation to which he died in the line of duty; the SASCO that he loved; is still consistent ideologically, politically and programmatically. And certainly, had he been alive, he would have said these things and perhaps problematised them even further, true to his character! It is in the nature of young people to ask questions all the time and about everything. If we stop doing this, then we must know that we acquired education only to be conservative and therefore we are not worthy to be called the progressive young intelligentsia of society. Young people must ask questions when things are bad to make them good and, when they are good, ask more questions until they are better and when they are better, they must ask some more questions to make them even more better and when they appear to have reached the pinnacle; they must broaden their horizon further afield and start all over again! Dear comrades; indeed I'm still speaking about this youth leader of note; a dynamo who dared to ask the most feared questions in search for a better life for his fellow human beings. And when we say so; no-one dares to object; even behind our backs! This is one fact about Cde Zuma. The questions arises: who among us is bold enough to stand up and be counted as one to emulate the good that Zuma represented; and in this regard; in the area of intellectual enquiry! The second and equally important fact about Cde Zuma was his undivided, loyal and organic service to the Progressive Youth Alliance both in stages and dynamically. The ANCYL, YCL, COSAS and SASCO were not born out of flashy congress resolutions. They were born out of concrete and real struggles. The conditions at different stages of our revolution demanded varied responses and one of those was indeed; the birth of the progressive youth movement in SA. These youth organisations have always sought to propel the liberation movement and society forward and often in difficult phases of the revolution. Therefore the relevance of youth organisations and youth politics must always be assessed against time and space; in other words, against phases and reality on the ground. With this context in mind, we are obliged to borrow from the wise words spoken to the youth of 1968 by the late General Secretary of the Communist Party Cde Moses Kotane: "At this hour of destiny, your country and your people need you. The future of South Africa is your hands and it will be what you make of it". Indeed when SASCO needed Cde Zuma he was there for us. He heeded to the challenge of his time. He understood the fact that he constituted the future; the future that was in his hands and; he sought to make it what he believed, unwaveringly, to be a better future! As an organic member of the PYA, Cde Zuma understood unequivocally that the struggles of COSAS and SASCO in the education front were complimented by the broader struggles of the ANCYL as an organisation for all young people; for the school going and the rest. This was not a theoretical dogma or prescription from an induction manual from SASCO but, it is a concrete understanding based on concrete reality about the interconnected nature of our struggles hence, we are members of society before we are students. One can only assume that Cde Zuma would have asked the question: What is more important to see and appreciate between the ANCYL, YCL, COSAS and SASCO? Is it the objective struggle in which we share a terrain and somewhat similar objectives or the different names, logos and the leadership, all of which may perish in a minute? Which side of the question would Cde Zuma have preferred? As a youth leader of note; a dynamo who asked the questions that he did; do we think he would have been happy about the state of the PYA today? Do we think he would have agreed to SASCO contesting the Youth League or put differently, the Youth League contesting SASCO? I want to argue that, Cde Zuma having served almost all the PYA structures, he would have preferred to be called a youth activist, only if being identified with one of the PYA structures meant indifference to the others! So as we celebrate the life and legacy of Cde Zuma: We must ask the question: How do we strengthen the PYA as a progressive youth voice in the South African society. How do we continue to make it relevant today? I'm posing these questions because; I know for sure that Cde Zuma would have demanded of us to attend to these questions. He would have done so as an organic leader of these organisations and; not as a paper member! Indeed, we all know that, with his legacy, no-one can dare to challenge us when we say: Cde Zuma was a youth leader of note; a dynamo who dared to ask the most feared questions in search for a better life for his fellow human beings! As he lies underground, we are dead sure that he still does, just like the 19thcentury Cuban Revolutionary, author and poet; Jose Marti echo in the hallowed corridors of student power to say: "I have lived: It is to duty that I pledged my arms. And not at once did the sun drop behind the hills that did not see my struggle and my victory". Today once more an untold story is told. Once again the song sings. Today it sings a different tune. It is a story of two facts! And the song says: 'Behold students! Here in this land of Zulu lies a youth leader of note; of intellectual pursuit, of organic leadership'. When the untold story is told. Others would ask: But who was this man? Would it be enough to say he was a comrade? A leader of note? A dynamo? A brilliant negotiator? Would it be enough to say he was all of these things? One in a lifetime. Once in a life; upon this time Cde Zuma lived with us! Cde "Pavarotti" was a youth leader of note; a real dynamo. Our President...My President! Long live SASCO! End. Volkswagen of South Africa (Pty) Ltd. (Reg No. 1946/023458/07) Chairman: Dr J Heizmann* Managing Director: D Powels Directors: M Glendinning (Sales & Marketing), S Mund* (Finance), S Macozoma, PJ Smith (Human Resources), N Maliza (Corporate and Government Affairs), T du Plessis (Production) German* DISCLAIMER : Volkswagen of South Africa (Pty) Ltd Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender. No liability shall attach whatsoever to VWSA from this communication except where the sender is acting on specific authority of VWSA, such authority being public record and acknowledged by VWSA by nature of the employee's functions. This document may in no way be photocopied, printed, scanned or electronically duplicated for any purposes other than that for which it was originally intended. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication, please discard this message and notify VWSA immediately at [email protected] VWSA's anonymous toll free ethics number is: 0800 11 53 54 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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] . -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
