By Amanda Ngwenya
What is Rael, a group of Israeli students promoting dialogue, came to offer the students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) their perspectives on the conflict in Israel primarily as a response to anti-Israeli activity in South Africa.
The meeting sparked much interest among the student body, especially as a result of the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts having recently hosted a debate on sanctions against Israel. The overwhelming message at the lunchtime meeting at UCT however was not one of an institution that values freedom of thought and of speech. Many students who came to the meeting to hear the Israeli students left none the wiser.
In a joint statement, the South African Student Congress, the Young Communist League of South Africa and the South African Union of Students (SAUS) declared that “SA campuses must be apartheid Israel-free zones”. It stated that “black students, [and] South Africans have no need for these Muldergate-like trips”.
The Muldergate, or Information Scandal, which rocked the Nationalist government between 1977 and 1979, was the result of secret funding by then prime minister BJ Vorster to wage propaganda wars at home and abroad. Connie Mulder was the minister of information at the time.
It must be made categorically clear that the SAUS is not in practice a representative body of students in higher education institutions nor is it one statutorily. The statement did not have the endorsement of universities around the country, and it did not have the endorsement of the Student Representative Council (SRC) at the University of Cape Town.
There are varying opinions on how to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the majority of students did not attend the meeting at UCT as pro-Israeli supporters, but instead were drawn in by a thirst for knowledge, ideas and opinion. Roi Wolf, spokesperson for What is Rael, said after the event that their “freedom of speech was infringed” and that their reception at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) had been better than at UCT. “The reason for this was not because students agreed with us at UJ but because we were given a chance to speak.”
Zackie Achmat, an activist who has been vocal about his support of Israeli boycotts, including academic boycotts by universities, repeatedly interjected and disrupted the proceedings at UCT. The attitude of Achmat along with anti-Israeli supporters in the audience was an affront to freedom of thought and expression. Students should be allowed to judge for themselves the opinions of the travelling students against the fact that they arrived with an intention to “show the various positive facets of Israeli society”, as one of their pamphlets reads. It was the attitude of the nanny state to shield its citizens from ideas it views as harmful. UCT students did not reap the benefit of being at a university — that of being able to process ideas and formulate disagreement or agreement. Instead UCT students were bullied and prevented from individual inquiry that may have led to support of the boycotts, had they been given the chance. Freedom of speech is not dead at UCT, although today may have suggested otherwise.
Amanda Ngwenya is the president of the SRC at the University of Cape Town. This article is written in her personal capacity.
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