Campus Reign of Terror In other headlines from yesterday, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Bellville campus, exploded into a war zone. Staff evacuated their offices and numerous students remained trapped in their rooms as protestors, rioters, security guards and police clash almost every evening. Bewildered students, speaking on condition of unanimity, said that they were being threatened and intimidated by ring leaders to join the so-called "protests". A third year student reported that the #FeesMustFall protestors would come throughout the residences banging on doors with pepper sprays and fire extinguishers, demanding that they stop sleeping, get up and join the protests. Anarchy and Arson On Monday, four cars were torched and the police's mobile operation centre on campus was attacked. Piles of rubble have been used as barricades on roads, some have been set on fire. Protestors have intimidated catering staff into providing them with food without payment. The protestors warned that #FeesMustFall is just the beginning. Threats and Land Invasions "Everybody knows that the free, decolonised education is just the start. Once we have achieved that we are going to call for the land to be taken!" Other protestors called the Vice Chancellor, Prins Nevehutalu, a "witch who must die!" University staff, including cleaners and security officials, have declared that they are not prepared to enter the buildings for fear of the rioters. So services on campus have stopped. Panic Among Academics Seeking Positions Overseas According to a Times Live, 12 October, article: "Academics queuing to quit SA", "a brain drain that would hollow out South Africa's top tertiary educational institutions could be looming as panicked academics look for jobs overseas." They quoted a group of academics who said that most of their colleagues are afraid to speak out against the current student anarchy and violence and are looking for employment at more stable institutions overseas. Academic Exodus The impending mass exodus looms as the stalemate between university administration and the student rioters continues. A recent study by the International Monetary Fund reveals that skilled workers are exiting sub-Saharan Africa at an accelerating rate. 27 Million are expected to flee Africa in the coming years. Academic Winter "The gradual effect of the continued protests will be the eventual impoverishment of South African Tertiary Educational Institutions. The very best academics will look for, and easily secure, employment at more stable universities elsewhere. Top researchers will choose to do their PHDs elsewhere. This will not only be disastrous for South Africa, but for Africa as a whole. With freedom of speech vanishing top Academics will leave and the wealth of knowledge and skills that they pass onto students will come to a halt." Science Must Fall In all seriousness, some students have started talking about the need for a "ScienceMustFall" movement, to "decolonalise science" and reject all Western science. At this meeting it was seriously suggested that witchcraft be investigated and traditional African religions and animism replace Western science as "witchdoctors can control lightening!" Campus Chaos Will Collapse Intellectual Infrastructure A professor at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research said, "We will lose a lot of our higher level staff, both in management, in teaching and in research. Laboratories cannot operate while there is chaos in the campus. We will see haemorrhaging becoming structural, the collapse of the intellectual infrastructure, without which there will be no universities". Giving In To the Rhodes Must Fall Agitators Fuelled the Current Crisis
The current #FeesMustFall movement sweeping universities throughout South Africa, grew out of the #RhodesMustFall movement in Cape Town University last year. When university administration did not decisively and promptly deal with the throwing of human excrement at the Rhodes statue and disruptive and increasingly violent activities of the #RhodesMustFall movement, they fuelled the revolutionary fervour and fanaticism of the rioters who succeeded in bringing the entire university to a standstill. When the Vice Chancellor and administration of UCT gave in to pressure to remove the statue of the Founder and financier of the University of Cape Town, the #RhodesMustFall movement dramatically expanded and brought defacement and damage to many national monuments throughout the country. A War Against Education and Civilisation It soon became clear that the issue was not Rhodes. This was a battle over history. A war against civilisation. A revolution against Law and Education itself. The Ministry of Higher Education reported that Rhodes Must Fall activists caused over R300 million in damaged on campuses last year and much more this year! Financing Failure This state allocates R9 Billion a year to student subsidies, while operating subsidies to the country's 26 universities total are R72 Billion over three years. According to the New Observer, more than 85% of all undergraduate students enrolled at South Africa's 23, majority black, universities failed their studies or dropped out. The failure rate for master students is 80% and for doctoral students, 88%. (These figures were contained in the South African government Department of High Education and Training's Annual Statistical Report which looked at the size and shape of post-school education and training in South Africa). Failure of Government 13% of South Africa's 53 million people pay Income Tax, while 36% of the countries budget is allocated to wages for a bloated public service whose lack of capacity has led to the birth of a parallel privately funded service industry that has expanded in direct proportion to the failure of government services in security, schooling, postal and health sectors. South Africans are therefore paying twice for services while the tax-payers foot the bill for 15 million welfare recipients and many billions of rands more lost through government corruption and inefficiency. What Used to be Failure Has Now Been Redefined as a Pass Nicolene Murdock, the Executive Director for teaching and quality at Monash University in South Africa, was quoted as saying that pass rates have ranged from 15 to 20% for several years now. Student registrations at universities have increased every year from 495,355 in 1994 to 1,002,110 in 2014. The pass rate at the universities is even lower than the school graduation rate in the country. The official pass rate in 2014 was 75.8% but that was a highly deceptive and misleading statistic. To "pass" end of school examinations in South Africa, a student only needs to get 40% in three subjects and 30% in three other subjects. Technically speaking, if the student met the minimum requirement and obtained 40% for three subjects, 30% for three subjects, and 0% for a seventh subject, then they could pass with a 30% average. The drop-out rate is not taken into account in the official pass rate. Most of the students attending university do not really qualify, nor will benefit from, a university education. With over 50% unemployment there are less jobs available to graduates anyhow. Wasting Time, Talent and Treasure If the #FeesMustFall movement succeeds in preventing universities conducting exams at the end of this academic year, then more than 800,000 students will have wasted a year, and tens-of-billions of Rands of state subsidies. Not even taking into account the fees, transportation and living costs of all those students and their families throughout this last year. Destabilising, Devaluing and Destroying The violence of the student rioters, (who for some reason are called protestors) is not only devaluing the South African Rand, chasing away investors, job creators and therefore prospects for any graduates, but they are devaluing the very degrees and institutions they are issued from as well. There was a time when the University of Cape Town was respected and a degree issued by that university almost guaranteed a good job. That time is long past. A degree from UCT is now becoming more of a liability. Stealing from Everyone The #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall rioters have actually stolen from everyone in the country, undermining the economy, sabotaging tertiary education, devaluing the Rand, chasing away investors and job prospects. Why? So the question may follow: Why do they do it? Do they not understand that what they are doing is completely counterproductive and destructive? Possibly they do, but that is their whole intention! Marxist Revolutionary Strategy in Action The issue is never the issue. The issue is the Revolution. What we are seeing is Marxist Revolutionary strategy in action. Those who believe in evolution maintain that a big bang, a cosmic explosion, led to all the life and order we see around us. Social Darwinism maintains that if you can throw enough bombs and burn down enough institutions, social utopia is bound to result! As Lenin and Stalin so eloquently put it: "Evolution leads to Revolution." What we are seeing on our campuses and in our streets is the outworking of Marxist Revolutionary agenda. Pawns of Politicians What most rioters and protestors may not understand is that they are merely pawns in a global communist agenda, an agenda in which they are expendable cannon fodder. Those pulling the strings and manipulating these colossal distractions do not care about the people involved, or the issues that they trumpet. The goal is what the communists describe as constructive chaos, which enable corrupt politicians and their backers to remain in power at the expense of the general population. "While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption." 2 Peter 2:19 Dr. Peter Hammond Frontline Fellowship P.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725 Cape Town South Africa Tel: 021-689-4480 [email protected] See also: The Heart and Soul of Karl Marx Chaos on Campus Change the Campus - Change the World Universities - Hijacking Our Youth? The Battle Over the Cecil Rhodes Statue The Battle for South Africa Marxism 101
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