Folia Failures

By Jacqueline Tizora

Last week we saw the second anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s passing. Something I saw being mourned here in the Netherlands, more than in South Africa. In fact, Nelson’s death anniversary this year came a month after student protests hit South Africa. Protests in which Mandela was called a ‘sell-out’ by students nationwide.

The student protests in South Africa in October were for free education and against a hike in already high fees. Succeeding in doing both, the students would make education accessible to all and not only the privileged. As it stands, 97% of South Africans cannot afford university fees. This, is in a country where 92% of the population is black, essentially means black people cannot afford to go to university at all. The circumstances of black people has not changed one bit, despite 21 years of ‘democracy’.

Many students are blaming the stagnancy of South Africa’s society on Nelson Mandela.  Upon release from prison Mandela opted for forgiveness and reconciliation, which is fair and fine but that meant that he in turn had sold out the Freedom Charter and ultimately the revolution.

Economic Freedom Front (EFF) party’s president, Julius Malema,  summarised these sentiments perfectly at Oxford University earlier this month. ‘The deviation from the Freedom Charter was the beginning of selling out of the revolution. The Freedom Charter is the bible of the South African revolution. Any deviation from that is a sellout position. We normally don’t use phrases like Mandela sold out, he was too old, he was tired, he left it to us. We have to pick it up from where he left it. That’s why he said the struggle is not over, political freedom is incomplete without economic freedom. I will say Nelson took us to a point and left it to us to take it further’.

So the protests that happened in South Africa were a culmination of feelings of frustration with not only current circumstances of black students but also the failure of the country’s leaders to bridge the gab between the majority black and minority white. So, for me to pick up a Folia Magazine with the title: STUDENTEN PROTEST- In de geest van Mandela, you can imagine that I was furious. A Dutch paper immediately associating any struggle for equality in the country with their beloved Nelson Mandela. This is especially infuriating because it shows that they did not even take the time to understand the students’ rage, otherwise they would have known how misinformed the title was.

I decided that, I cannot let this slide and that this needs to be rectified because Folia is a probably the only news source for many Dutch students about South Africa. I sent a formal mail to the Hoofdredacteur, Altan Erdogan. I introduced myself fully, so that he knows I am coming from an informed position as a member of the movement myself. This communication was not met with much openess, but resistance. His justification for the title was that it was decided on together by himself and Niels, their South African correspondent who also writes for Trouw.

Altan, after a few emails asking for clarification as to how the protests were in the spirit of Mandela, finally responded with a harsh email saying, ‘In my opinion all is clear now: I personally am not in the position (nor feel the urge) to do more research on this theme’.

Interesting that he would fully accept what a Dutchman reporting in South Africa is saying over someone that is actively involved by the movement and who is actually affected by it, daily.

In this week’s issue of Folia there is an interview of a Dutch student who was in Moçambique for a while with the title ’64 Dagen Huisarrest in Afrika’. Africa is not a country and despite Moçambique being a very large country in Africa, it does not even amont to a 1/50^th of Africa’s surface area. Two major blunders in one semester, both pertaining to stereotyping Africa. I think it is fair to say that Folia should, for the preservation of all readers and africans too, stop trying to write articles about Africa because according to them, they just don’t have the ‘urge to do more research’ on such themes.