The struggle for equal education: Youth social activism and praxis of education justice in contemporary South Africa

• In Event: Education and Activism Redux II

Proposal

Young people have a long history of leading the charge in critical change-making and justice-focused social change processes in South Africa. Youth-led protests can be traced back to the apartheid era, indicating that the practice of social activism by young people for educational justice predates the nation's young democracy. The historic June 16 1976 “Soweto uprising” or “Soweto riots”—black school students’ demonstrations and protests against apartheid and its separate and unequal education system—is a case study of what is possible when young people collectively mobilise themselves to assert their agency through political protest action and demand a future they dreamed possible. The student activists of the 1976 generation not only united and increased their political influence during a period of significant racial and educational inequality, but they also played a significant role in fundamentally altering the socio-political climate of the nation, dealing the apartheid government a severe blow at the height of the regime.

While the adoption of Afrikaans as the primary language of instruction in black schools served as the impetus for the events of June 16 1976, the resistance that followed was a widespread uprising against a dual system that aimed to give black African children an inferior education and stunt their development. Youth-led protest movements in South Africa today have come to be associated with social unrest and violence as a result of the violent turn of events during the 1976 student protest actions and those that followed. However, the student demonstrations of 1976 did more than pave the way for the abolition of the racialised education system or the establishment of a unified system after democracy was established; they concretised the potential of youth activism for justice-oriented social change. The 1976 youth uprising also demonstrate the reality of South African state violence in the face of civil disobedience and mass mobilisation by young black students to voice their moral opposition to the government's policies. This relationship has endured through both political dispensations.

Nearly three decades later, young black people still organise and march in protests to call for genuine educational reform in democratic South Africa. While today's youth may face challenges different from those faced by their counterparts in 1976, they still rely on social activism (mass mobilisation and protests) in their efforts to change how the schooling system operates and their access to equal education. Young people's educational experiences have changed significantly in many ways while remaining relatively unchanged in others. Many young people still struggle with inferior education due to the unequal dual schooling system established during the apartheid era.

Despite the system having been desegregated, the majority of black students are more likely to attend schools characterised by the lack of the necessary resources, poor facilities, overcrowding, and little to no access to necessities like water, electricity, and basic sanitation. The historical inequity in the sector, as exemplified by the aforementioned infrastructure problems, adversely affects the educational trajectory of young people who still attend township and rural schools because many of them frequently do not complete their schooling or leave the system ill-prepared for further education or the workforce.

Thus, the continued existence of inequality in South Africa's schooling system not only poses a threat to the democratic project premised on egalitarian ideals but also inspires a new generation of young black activists and protestors who are determined to challenge and alter the status quo to bring about more equitable and inclusive educational opportunities in the nation. For instance, South Africa has experienced a rise in student social activism in higher education in recent years as young people continue to voice their dissatisfaction in an era of "decolonising education". Although sometimes defused by educational institutions' counter-protest tactics, the rise in student protests in democratic South Africa is slowly changing the cultures of some historically-white universities and universities of technology.

Despite the research focus on student protests in the country limited to the higher education sector, in the last 15 years, disgruntled school-going South Africans have taken to the streets and social media to protest against the government's failures and assert their basic human right and constitutionally entrenched right to education. One social movement has been successful in mobilising large numbers of schooling-going young people who are directly impacted by educational issues, giving them the tools they need to become education reform activists, and it has also given social action against educational inequity in the nation legitimacy.

Using an interpretative phenomenological approach as well as a critical analysis of the work carried out by Equal Education, a youth-led democratic social movement, this paper contributes to a localised understanding of youth social activism towards educational justice in democratic South Africa. The paper specifically examines the notion of protest as politics, hope, and praxis in the context of education by applying deliberative democratic theory. In doing so, it demonstrates how students’ use of mass mobilisations and protests, supported by various media, continues to be effective for centring young people’s voices in schooling policy-making processes, service delivery in the sector, and holding the government accountable to its constitutional obligation to provide quality schooling for all its citizens.

Author

• Elizabeth Biney, Equal Education