Having been in teaching for many years has led me to believe that schools are the safest places for children to be. Township life is not easy as there are no recreational facilities for young ones and it’s only in schools where we can have children playing and getting into meaningful discussions.
The 1976 uprisings were hatched in schools, and to a larger extent the conscious teachers and community leaders could trust in investing knowledge on the learners who saw themselves as part of the communities they were coming from. Most importantly, understanding the misery that Black life was, and still is, all about.
Most interesting is that most are of the belief that the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in schools was the target of student anger in 1976, but the reality is that students knew that Afrikaans was just a catalyst. The main issue was the delay of the liberation agenda, particularly after the banning of the liberation movements in the 1960s.
Many, after the 1960s, started to fall on to the apartheid trap of luring our parents and elders into drinking holes and turning them into docile drunkards who would not be interested in pursuing the Struggle for liberation. Many would crowd this drinking holes after knocking off from work and that would almost be the daily routine for our people.
The liquor business, that the apartheid government put up in townships, became very popular and helped to fund the very same apartheid machinery that was designed to grind us. These spots were among the first targets of students anger in 1976 and many were burnt and destroyed as they were seen as distractions to the liberation course.
We needed a sober society to deal with the monster that we were faced with. Fast forward to 2021, a call for closure of schools is growing louder as many see these institutions as possible super-spreaders of Covid-19.
The call is amplified even further by the Congress of SA Students (Cosas), which I still have to be convinced that it exists in our schools. If it does exist, this is the most appropriate time to apply the slogan "each one teach one", so that the learners take that home and minimise the spread of Covid-19.
Nevertheless, my issue is that Cosas sees very little wrong in the fact that liquor-serving outlets are operational and many are visiting these unholy spaces on a daily basis, despite the monster we are faced with. Is Cosas conscious to the possibility that the learners may be getting it from those who visit these places and take it to school and not the other way round?
Driving learners out of schools would basically result in learners loitering and ending up in those drinking holes or playing with the only toy available to them when parents are at work, which is sex. Killing future instead of securing it. One is tempted to ask this question: where was the decision to shut down schools hatched?
I indicated earlier that I do not believe we still have student movements in schools. The so-called militant group is possibly led by people who have long exited the school system and have no understanding or even interest in what is happening in schools.
In 1976 we went for the destruction of drinking holes to ensure sobriety as we concentrated on the war against the settler regime. We could not afford to be derailed by people fed liquor by the apartheid government. To a larger extent, we did well in this regard.
In 2021 we are faced with a pandemic that thrives on people's carelessness, and we close schools, which give a bit of refuge to our children and say nothing about taverns and outlets that continue to poison minds of our people.
While it is true that infections are growing in schools, truth is, schools are regulated and controlled environments and the pandemic can be fought better in there, and emphasising the importance of hygiene becomes even easier in schools than in taverns.
If Cosas was operating in schools, they could have easily identified this. But because of the possibility of operating from liquor-serving outlets, they look at schools as problematic. We cannot afford to hear a call to close down schools and not taverns, and unfortunately this is what we are hearing.
What’s wrong with our communities?
• Galekhutle is a Sowetan reader
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