In the last two weeks our local institutions of learning have been making headline news. This is nothing new in that we’re used to our tertiary level pupils, especially at the University of Botswana (UB), challenging the establishment in some way. Demonstrations, strikes and instances of student unrest at this particular institution have been occurring as far back as I can remember. The reasons for these disturbances have varied along with the changing socio-economic and political circumstances of the times.
In 1978 when Botswana was experiencing border clashes and instances of escalating violence spilling over her long frontiers with Rhodesia, South West Africa and South Africa, “a brutal assault by Rhodesian security forces upon a Botswana Defence Force (BDF) convoy within Botswana, resulting in 15 deaths, was related to subsequent domestic turmoil. In the aftermath, three whites in the Tuli area were killed by a BDF patrol.
When the Botswana Government decided to bring murder charges against the commander, Sergeant Tswaipe, students at the University College leaped to his defense alleging that he was only protecting the nation against white terrorists. Their demonstration turned into a full-fledged riot when the nervous authorities refused to permit them to march through the Gaborone mall and surrounded the campus with baton-wielding police supplied with teargas” (Wiesfelder, 2001).
I remember this incident because my youngest uncle, a student at the University of Botswana at the time, later related the tale of how he hid in his dorm room closet in order to avoid those self-same baton wielding members of the SSG (Special Support Group – riot police) to myself and a cousin. My cousin and I, had just been through a similar experience, some seventeen years later in 1995, when we’d had to hurriedly vacate UB premises, assailed by that very grouping in response to student demonstrations over government’s response ÔÇô or rather what they saw as lack of ÔÇô to the ritualistic murder of 14 year old Segametsi Mogomotsi in Mochudi village.
Segametsi went missing sometime on 5 November 1994, and her body was found naked and mutilated in an open space the next morning. In January 1995 the┬á‘dipheko’ (medicine murder) resulted in students at Radikolo Community Junior Secondary School (RCJSS) -the school she’d attended- organizing a march to the District Commissioner’s office in Mochudi in response to “perceived government collusion in the practice of witchcraft.” The march escalated into protests and riots by students and the citizens of Mochudi and protesters subsequently burned the house(s) of the suspects. When the demonstrations and violence spread to Gaborone, and when UB students stormed an ongoing meeting of parliament the SSG were again called in to quell the violence. Government latterly called in Scotland Yard to investigate the homicide of Segametsi’s but as yet no one has been officially charged with her murder.
In more recent times, UB Students and those attending other tertiary level institutions such as Limkokwing University of Science and have demonstrated or gone on strike over reductions in their living allowances, inefficiencies with regard to the provision of text books, the reinstatement of supplementary examinations and on-campus security concerns. Other grievances (at UB) have included the allegedly understaffed and under equipped School of Medicine, continued participation in the Inter-varsity Games, lecturer attendance (or rather in-attendance) with regard to classes and the proposed closure of 411 ÔÇô a student bar located on the main UB campus.
It’s become too easy to dismiss the complaints and criticisms of the tertiary student population as superfluous or the ranting’s and raving’s of youngsters with too much time on their hands and too much money in their pockets. On the other hand, if the task of a university or other institute of higher education in Botswana or other parts of the developing world is to convey and communicate in a more particular and differentiated way “the cultural heritage (the history, the scientific knowledge, the literature) of their society and of the world culture of which they are a part; they must trains persons who will become members of the elites of their societies to exercise skills in science, technology management and administration; they must cultivate the capacity for leadership and a sense of responsibility to their fellow countrymen and they must train them to be constructively critical to be able to initiate changes while appreciating what they have inherited (Lipsett, 1996).” While the public often bemoan the behavior of tertiary youth, in this particular instance, that of Botswana, whose 47 year old democracy is often held up as a true beacon of democracy in a continent where such is scarce, then the tertiary education experience must include and inculcate into these young men and women, the principles of democracy. And as such, these young people, who for the most part are over the age of 18 and thus enfranchised, are simply exercising their democratic rights when they participate in politics and or governance and/or attempt to bring about change. While it is often said that democracy is a thing for the rich, which as a developing nation we are not, and that these youths must be made to realize and accept the financial constraints of their government, especially in these hard times. It does not take away from the fact that their involvement and/or participation in politics and governance is their inalienable right. It then becomes the responsibility of the institutions they attend, government, society at large, their parents and their families to impart to them the import of what being a responsible citizen entails and thus what issues they should indeed take ‘issue’ with and those of less import.
University and tertiary education students are open to pressure from politically sensitive countrymen, the opinions of academic contemporaries on the continent and abroad as well as from their own student bodies and this particular population are generally at one of the most sensitive and reactive stages of life; hence their strong reactions to perceived threats.
With regard to the events that transpired at Ledumang Senior Secondary School (LSSS) this past week ÔÇô when students rioted in response to the beating of a student by a group of teachers. The assault on the student allegedly precipitated by disrespectful comments made by the student after he witnessed his mathematics teacher kissing a female colleague at the school entrance ÔÇô all concerned citizens would surely agree that these events were distressing and something that should never have occurred and while corporal punishment is permitted under the law, it would seem to be that what took place was more than that. That in light of what’s been reported, it was an unwarranted assault by an adult on a child. Can this spontaneous event be described as political? Did it seek in some way to influence official policy or transform ‘the system’ in some way? No, not according to what we’ve all read and heard, but perhaps, there is a lesson we can take from it as a nation. That if our desire is for a nation of informed, politically aware, concerned and active citizens, our education system is ground zero, and that the ‘learning’ cannot take place too early.
