UNEMBARGOED: What student protests mean for South Africa

President Jacob Zuma, second left, leaves a meeting with vice-chancellors and chairpersons of councils, university management representatives and student leaders at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Friday.

ONE of the regular difficulties of editing a newspaper like Business Day, whose very title gives it a seemingly parochial mandate, is how much space and energy to allocate to something such as the student protests. It seems like a diversion, doesn’t it? This is particularly so if you have to take the decision before the protests actually become international news as with that watershed demonstration at the gates of Parliament, or on the lawns of the Union Buildings.

The day the students made Wits University vice-chancellor Adam Habib sit down on the floor among them, I knew we were watching something special unfold.

I also knew that we would regret treating this as just another demonstration when its historical profundity became apparent later. This was at a time when some commentary derided the student campaign as an act of ill-discipline and hooliganism.

Important news stories need to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and hauled like a rucksack. If you do not, you lose the initiative and, with it, the opportunity to develop insights and cultivate reliable sources. Despite your best efforts, you can never really catch up. The decision of the team here to follow the spreading protests and bring them to you has been proven right. Many now agree that last week was history in the making. Once again, just as it was in 1976, it was left to the young to fight for something dear to their future in a way that shows the rest of the country and the world what is broken about our politics. They have provided a powerful lesson in what the next few years may look like now that a new standard in the exercise of the right to free assembly and protest has been set.

President Jacob Zuma’s announcement of a moratorium on university fee increments is not the end of the story, but the beginning. It is a story about a shift in the balance of political forces in our country, one in which business, a significant part of our audience, shall once again be a disempowered passenger.

Last week, the most common questions I was asked by business people related to the student protests and what they meant. I sensed a genuine anxiety borne out of powerlessness. It is our job, I believe, to provide them with the information and insights that will enable actors in this economy to draw reasonable conclusions about the state of our society. What is happening now and what happens next will have a deep effect on business and the economy.

It is my fervent wish that organised business can stand up and be counted as a strong voice that helps to shape our society. There is a dire need for business leaders to stop being so terrified of the powers that be and show themselves to be as connected to the concerns of ordinary people as they are with building relationships with powerful politicians and bureaucrats.

I meet such business people all the time, oddly enough. They care very deeply about this country, but they’re captives to fear. They do not want to have regulatory difficulties or get hauled before the mandarins in Isaka Seme Street (formerly Sauer Street). They cower and speak in euphemisms that vanish in private discussions.

The few who speak out do so because their silence has become an albatross around the necks of their shareholders. Their investment in political correctness and wilful ambiguity has yielded poor dividends.

One of the ways in which they could establish a new rapport with the public is through this very newspaper, but they won’t. If speaking to a journalist is hazardous, then putting your thoughts in writing is downright lethal. Yet our op-ed and review pages are here for them to provide insights into their world and what they believe should be done by all of us to make our country better.

I do fear that just like we faced a similar prospect last Monday, business is facing a critical moment of decision. It can step to the fore now or, unsuccessfully, play catch-up later.

I am delighted at the injection of a cohort of new and familiar columnists into our pages to provide incisive analysis of local and international social, political and economic trends. Lindiwe Mazibuko, JJ Tabane and Kelly-Jo Bluen are just what we need at this time in our country’s evolution and I’m delighted to provide space for their personal insights. I still yearn for someone from business to put their hand up, and I shall oblige.

There are those who believe that the job of an editor is to protect them from views they do not like. This is false. A newspaper is supposed to be a free intellectual space in which the different views in society can be aired and contested. It is in the contestation of ideas that common ground becomes visible.

As anxiety-inducing as the times we live in may be, it is also an incredible time to be alive. What happens next in our politics will determine the nature and direction of our political economy. In turn, that will determine what happens to business. This is why we shall continue keenly to follow the seemingly confusing kaleidoscope of actions by actors seemingly irrelevant to our economy. You can thank us later.

 by Songezo Zibi