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A significant number of South Africa's universities are clamping down on student political activity. This is wrong. We believe it is undemocratic and to the detriment of those students with a genuine interest in politics specifically and South Africa's future generally.
I will be writing a letter to the Vice Chancellor of each university we feel has acted unfairly to constrain political activity, asking them each for an explanation and their full public position on the issue. Once we have their replies, I will report back.
Some examples, collected from the DA's various student organisations across the country include:
• At the University of Pretoria political societies are routinely denied their requests to hold even simple information tables, whilst other student societies are allowed to continue at liberty. The Chair of the DA Students Organisation (DASO) branch at this institution was subject to disciplinary action for distributing DA material to students prior to the 2011 local government election;
• At Rhodes University, which was this year constituted as its own ward in the local government election, no ward councillor candidates from any party were allowed to campaign on the campus to engage with the students that they were being elected to represent. An address by Helen Zille scheduled for the university's constitution week in September 2011 has been blocked by the university management subsequent to interim approval being given by the Vice-Chancellor.
• At the University of Johannesburg political activity and visits by political leaders on campus during the 2011 local government were shrouded in red tape and all but officially banned, with political parties having to operate outside the gates of the campus;
• There is a continued prevention of politically aligned SRC contestation at North West University;
• At the University of KwaZulu Natal, the DASO branch, which won 2 seats on the SRC in 2009, were informed on the day of the 2010 SRC election that they were no longer recognised as a student society, making them ineligible to contest SRC elections. This is despite the Executive Dean of Students indicating that recognition does not have to be re-applied for on an annual basis;
• The DASO branch at Mangosuthu University of Technology has been denied recognition as a student society on three consecutive occasions for the past year and a half as it is alleged the required paperwork has been ‘lost’ by the SRC on all three occasions;
• The DASO branch at CPUT was denied recognition in 2011 and their appeal dismissed after allegations that the required documentation was not furnished, despite there being written proof of its submission.
During Apartheid South African universities were at the heart of the resistance movement, and rightly so. Tertiary institutions should encourage and facilitate critical engagement by students, and indeed society as a whole, with the politics of the day. Actively preventing students from engaging in political activity not only goes against these principles, but so too does it contravene the right to freedom of association – one of the central tenets of our constitution.
This stated, we are aware that the increased clampdown on political association on campuses is driven by legitimate concerns. For years SASCO has terrorized campuses across the country. But one can never subvert a principle in response to the threat of violence. Where students act illegally, they must be punished. You cannot tar everyone with the same brush. The majority of student organisations are interested in nothing more than politics itself and the interests of the students they represent. That is something that should be encouraged, not controlled and constrained.
And, just to be clear, not every university is guilty of this, although the number seems to be increasing. When it does manifest in hard action, rules and regulations are made so limiting as to render any real political activity redundant. It is important that student politics be relative to the other pursuits any university is primarily tasked with, they are first and foremost academic institutions, but we believe many have gone too far.
There are currently, across the country, a range of SRC elections taking place. These have always been central to any university, however it increasingly appears that the role political student societies are being allowed to play in these elections is being unfairly constrained.
In response to this worrying trend, the DA Youth, led by UCT SRC President Amanda Ngwenya and UCT SRC Secretary General Sean Darge, both DASO members, have initiated a national debate to address this issue on 30 August 2011 at 10am on Cape Talk/702. We have invited the SRC Presidents of both Wits and the University of Johannesburg and hope that it will open a national dialogue about this worrying trend at our tertiary institutions.