SOUTH AFRICA: Ethnic campus clubs on the rise

Many things would surprise South African student activists of the '70s and '80s if they were to go back to the universities in which they studied, writes Dinga Sikwebu for The Sunday Times. Not only would they discover a changed landscape in terms of student composition, and the reconfiguration of institutions of higher learning, they would also be surprised at how universities are now run like businesses with strong cost-management programmes. But nothing is likely to shock them more than posters advertising meetings for Zulus, Pedis, Xhosas, Tswanas, Sothos, Vendas and Shangaans.

While organisations on different campuses before the demise of apartheid mirrored the racial fissures in South African society, with black and white students belonging to separate movements, black student organisations of that bygone era jettisoned ethnic identities and frowned at any mobilisation along ethnic lines. They followed different ideological strands, but the emphasis among African, coloured and Indian students was on 'blackness', disenfranchisement and discrimination, as opposed to ethnic identities.

However, since the late '90s, student organisations whose membership has a concentration of a single language group have mushroomed on South African campuses. Among the 91 student organisations and clubs that existed at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2007, seven fell into this category. Although they were met with derision and ambiguity within the university and broader activist circles, since their inception these 'cultural' organisations have forged relations with similar student movements at other South African universities with the declared aim of establishing national federations fashioned along ethnic lines.
Full report on The Sunday Times site