‘Young people have no reason to be proud of us’ – Azapo president

As South Africa gears up to commemorate the June 16, 1976 student uprising, Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) president Mosibudi Mangena has lambasted the government for its failure to champion and drive youth interests, saying the education of black children was in a worst state compared to apartheid.

The former science and technology minister in the Thabo Mbeki administration said the post-democracy public education system produced young people who could not read or write.

“As seen during the 1976 student revolt, education has always been in the forefront of struggle for liberation from apartheid,” Mangema said.

“We are not producing young people that are needed by the economy – something contributing to youth unemployment because of the education system.

“The education of the black child – especially the poor – is worse than it was under apartheid. In stark contrast with the past, we are failing in terms of application, because the black child can’t read or write, with discipline having gone to the dogs.”

Mangena said the government could not be expected “to take care of the interests of young people if we cannot take care of the affairs of the country as a whole”.

“We have dismally failed the people in all respects – particularly the youth.

“We are failing in the health sector and in providing security for the country’s citizens, with police unable to protect us against criminals of any description. Women and children can’t safely walk the streets without expecting to be attacked.

“The railway system has collapsed and is in absolute mess. Immigration is no good and we don’t know who is in our country. We are a disappointment and young people have no reason to be proud on us,” Mangena said.

The government, he said, had “a long way to go and I don’t think it will be able to turn things around”.

“We have entered a downward slope, with things getting worst. We are reducing spending on education and health – almost in everything. Very soon we may not be able to build houses for our people, deliver clean water or pay civil servant increases.

“Next time we might not be able to pay them salaries at all – something likely to induce more unrest in the country. There will be more reason why our young cannot be proud of us.

“The endurance of people has limits and it does not matter who is doing the oppression. Even if you are oppressed by your own people, you reach a point when you cannot take it any more.”

He warned that daily service delivery protests in the form of road closures by demonstrators burning tyres signalled that “people are unhappy”.

The first Black Consciousness Movement leader to be sentenced in 1973 during apartheid, Mangena served a five-year imprisonment on Robben Island charged under the Terrorism Act when the June 16 uprising erupted.

“While on Robben Island, we were not allowed newspapers or access to radio. It took time for news to reach Robben Island that there was a big student uprising in the country.

“We could not believe it at the beginning, but it later become apparent that it was quite big.”

Mangena said the youth revolt commemoration was “crucial because I doubt if we would be where we are now had there been no June 16, 1976”.

“It changed the political landscape fundamentally, banishing the fear that our people had for the white minority power structure. Our people jettisoned that fear and confronted the regime without arms, resulting in many young people leaving the country in droves to wage the struggle from outside – swelling the depleting ranks of the liberation movements.

“So many young people did not need an invitation to join up and fight the regime. The struggle picked up momentum after 1976, with the rebellion continuing inside the country until the dawn of 1994.”

Asked about the first group of 1976 youth leaders to arrive on Robben Island, referred to as “klip-gooiers” (stone-throwers), Mangena said the young militants who included activists Saki Macozoma, Stone Sizani and Nkosi Molala, “changed the mood”.

He recalled: “It was not in the mere sense of grandchildren arriving as prisoners – to find their grandparents languishing on Robben Island.

“When this flood of young people came, we saw a new brand of confrontational politics, that changed the mood.

“They brought a very defiant perspective that did not want to live by the prison rules – a new era of confrontation with the authorities. Those young people were a product of the Black Consciousness Movement, coming from the leadership of the SA Student Movement – adhering to teachings that blacks should assert themselves, not submit and not respect whites as much as society did.

“When we arrived in the ’70s, we were too few to make a dramatic change – despite trying.”

• brians@citizen.co.za