'Build own schools': An inconvenient call to do the right things

Cornwall College, a monument of privilege, on a hill welcoming international guests into Pretoria, and ironically just next to the ANC's NEC prime meeting spot, has volunteered itself into a June the 16th subject. 'Flirting' with the 'demon of racism', Cornwall has blown open the myth that living standard measured blackness is immune to racism and dehumanisation. It has in fact proven the direct relationship between activities of those that have with the actual practice and funding of racial inequality in South Africa. The response by some 'non-black parent age placard wielding South Africans' for Black parents that joined the new generation June the 16th learners protesting against racism, that they should build their own schools might be a defining as June the 16th 1976. 

The Cornwall event is part of a spiralling discontent by youth with privilege at the hypocrisy of non-racialism within the walls of a highly priced private education schooling system. It resembles the June the 16th spiral in its characteristic of dealing with the commonness of how the system is gradually dehumanising learners whose living standards measured status in an otherwise non-black dominated economy means nothing to the invisible hierarchies of dominance entrenched by pre-1994 templates of dominance. This was seen at St John's College in Johannesburg, Pretoria Girls High, St Mary's DSG in Pretoria, and at a tertiary level it was expressed as the Rhodes must fall campaign at a University known for its ultimate meccaism of private school educated South Africans. 

A note about June the 16th

June the 16, and not necessarily June 16, is a representative date that defines then youth response to the horrors that came with apartheid education and the system that was orchestrating it. June the 16 was a moment where then learners from all over South Africa, some of whom are senior members of the South African Establishment, made an emphatic call for black power and by extension mainstreaming blackness as part of normality in South Africa. Theirs was a call for humans of African origin to have as free a reign in their native continent as any indigenous person anywhere in the world would have. 

June the 16th represents in conceptual terms  a process that begun on June 15 in Alexandra and found traction of global acclaim in Soweto on June 16 as it was spiralling throughout the country until it was finally suppressed as an active process by the end of August 1976. As a concept it encapsulates the leaner inspired protests that marked the decisive beginning of a process to repudiate 'formal apartheid'. It is a moment that exposed Apartheid to a global community that was beginning to flirt with 'own affairs' for humans of African origin as it has now accepted it, save its unworkability, the two State Policy for Israel and Palestine. 

Build own schools

The call to build own schools is not as simplistic as the non-black parents have written it. It should be elevated into a construct that represents an ideological departure point by those parents. It is in fact not new to our nomenclature. In an interview with Given Mkhari, Johan Rupert made reference to 'own schools' and 'own people'. Inconvenient as this call might sound and feel it is a call whose time has come for humans of African origin to enter into a genuine process to start the renaissance of their Africanness.  

A school is an institution at which instruction is given in a particular discipline. It can also mean a group of people (particularly writers, artists, or philosophers) sharing similar ideas or methods. These two definitions provide a definitional perspective that calls for a back to basic understanding of the question what are the 'own schools' that must be built by parents who were told to do so. 

South Africa has in excess of 26 000 public schools that carry a leaner population averaging at 600 per school. This computes to a minimum of 15,6m learners. Assuming a population size of 60m as the official statistics would want us to believe, this gives us a quarter of the population, a perfect substrate of humans in the custody of public schools. These schools are, according to the 'non-black parents wielding placards at Cornwall College', not the 'own schools' that 'black parents who included the governor of Africa's largest formal economy's Governor' must build. The 26k plus schools are not in the living standards measured status reach of 'placards wielding parents' at Cornwall, hence cannot be seen as existing 'own school', but new 'own schools' must still be build.

The 'own schools' that are private are thus defining of who is 'own' in the 'build own schools'. It is tempting and somewhat ideationally lazy to think of 'own' as non-black, when own might be inclusive of 'blacks' that know and agree with their position in the 'pecking order' within the 'living standard measured' 'own school community'. It has been demonstrated that it is the June the 16th type kids and youth that have in fact disrupted the ' stable and almost accepted' 'pecking order' at the 'built own schools' that cannot accept its recalibration. South Africa has been here before. If you wanted to have a better experience of apartheid, there was the TBVC states as 'own schools' allows to be built.

What does the built your own schools say to us as humans of African Origin?

1. It is saying, fortunately this was directly said to the governor of the Reserve Bank, we must build our own banks inside of whom it will be our own schools on how to take control of our own financial services destiny
2. It is saying, we must build our own industries, inside of whom it will be our own schools through which we can instruct on how to build a primary economy 
3. It is saying, we must expropriate land to become our own land, inside of whom we will be our own schools on how to be food sovereign, food secured, and nutrition secured
4. It is saying, we must build our own energy generation industries, inside of whom we will build our own schools on how to be energy secured as a nation
5. It is saying, we must build our own content generation spaces, inside of whom we will define ourselves as humans of African origin with a self standing cultural basis.
6. It is saying, we must build own value chains into our own spaces as an own market. If we all remember, our cause received attention when sanctions were about to be undergirded by township based consumer boycotts. 
7. It is saying a whole lot of other things we must build as own schools. 

If it is true that political power is in the hands of those that must go and build own schools, the 26k plus public schools can be schools that can be converted into 'own schools'. If it is true that the fiscus is under the control of those that must go and build own schools the 'build your own schools' message relayed indirectly to all, but directly to the Reserve Bank governor can be frontally tackled. 

Be ngisho nje🤷🏽‍♂️