I’m not so sure I agree with everything Max du Preez has to say in his latest opinion piece, but we’ll allow him to take the floor.

Yesterday we saw more violence erupt at universities across the country, and over at Wits that spread off campus to Braamfontein and surrounding areas.

You can see two videos in THIS post – one showing police responding to unrest on campus with what seems like excessive force, the other showing wanton destruction of a vehicle by people you’d probably find have little or nothing to do with the actual #FeesMustFall movement.

Anyway Max’s latest column on News24 is titled ‘#FeesMustFall ‘no longer about fees’, so let’s hand the floor over to him and pick out some key passages:

It’s time to face the reality. The “revolution” on our campuses is not primarily about university fees any longer. Nor is it about the “decolonisation” of the curricula.

The subtext, the unspoken agenda, is beginning to look more and more like an effort to create a mini Arab Spring moment and to turn the entire post-1994 dispensation on its head.

At the very least, what we’re seeing on our campuses reflect a deep anger and resentment with the status quo, way beyond fees.

A cue that this is not about fees any longer is the extreme race rhetoric we have witnessed the last few weeks, unlike anything we have ever seen.

The legitimate struggle against whiteness and white privilege is being overtaken by a populist assault on white citizens. Some days #FeesMustFall sounds more like #WhitesMustFall.

White South Africans don’t determine university fees. Government does. One can blame them for a lot of things, but not this.

If the cost of university studies were really the central question, the leaders of the protests would have channelled their energy towards the government rather than towards vice-chancellors and fellow students. Universities are simply soft targets.

They would have celebrated their significant gains, negotiated agreements for what should happen in 2017/2018 and then allowed the academic calendar to continue.

And they would have been much tougher and less ambiguous about the violence and destruction of public property.

Like the thuggery in Braamfontein yesterday. The erudite Wits SRC spokesperson, Fasiha Hassan, was on the phone with a TV reporter claiming the students were well behaved and only reacted to “police brutality”, but when she was asked about the stoning and burnings, she abruptly ended the conversation.

Students looting stores? Really?

Here below is footage of that looting, a PUMA store in Braamfontein being fleeced:

And here’s what it looks like when your class gets interrupted by a fire extinguisher. This from the Stellies Zoology faculty:

We’ll skip forward to the end of Max’s opinion piece:

We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the present political instability was largely due to the dramatic implosion of our once powerful and proud liberation movement, the ANC, and the resulting serious lack of vision, direction and leadership. This process is continuing unabated…

We as a society should try and marginalise, neutralise the pseudo-revolutionaries by taking away their popular support.

That means we should urgently and decisively address the source of the unhappiness and resentment prevalent in black South African society.

Because, actually, the angry students are correct: we the people of South Africa will have to transform the post-1994 order radically – but on our terms and without the dictates of fascist pseudo-revolutionaries. And without violence.

Without violence would be ideal, but I fear that we’re only going to see an escalation in antagonism from both sides before any kind of resolution is reached.

Perhaps the most poignant picture from yesterday’s protests, Father Graham Pugin staring down police outside the Holy Trinity Church next to the Wits campus:

The Mail & Guardian with what happened next:

While some students threw rocks and others scattered away from the church’s entrance, Pugin stood in front of the gate in his white church robes with his hands raised in the air. Then, police shot him from the Nyala and the rubber bullet struck his mouth.

Pugin started to bleed and turned his back on the police, who continued firing, when he was embraced by another church employee. As the barrage of bullets ended, Pugin was led into his office to receive treatment.

“I’ve always supported the students when they get shot. Our church has a clinic that treats the injured and we decided to open the gates for them because police were shooting them all over Braamfontein”…

Some video of Pugin doing just that below:

Fr Graham #Pugin @RanjeniM @UrsulaChikane @Padre_Chris @rpollittsj @SAJesuits @EFFSouthAfrica @gwalax @dailymaverick @SACBCJustice pic.twitter.com/fuaT719Ah0

— Lawrence Mdu Ndlovu (@NdlovuLawrence) October 10, 2016

The moment after he was shot:

Back to the Mail & Guardian:

Several other students looked on in shock as blood poured out of Pugin’s mouth and down his church robes.

“They shot him right in front of me with his hands up. He was so peaceful,” said a 20-year-old Wits student with tears in her eyes, who did not want to be named.

I don’t know what the solution to this current mess is, but there has to be a better way to deal with unrest than this.

[sources:news24&mg]