About last week

Fees Must Fall (FMF) is a movement in South Africa that has emerged due to a dissatisfaction with the annual tuition increases instated by various South African universities. FMF’s immediate demands include a halt in tuition increase; however, the movement also argues that tertiary education should (eventually, not immediately) be free of charge in South Africa.
The reason that I wanted to talk a bit about Fees Must Fall is because of an incident that happened last Friday at Stellenbosch. Since last Monday, there had been a peaceful protest taking place in the Stellenbosch University library. The sit-in participants had basically been ignored for the entire week, as they were not being particularly vocal or disruptive to the other students in the library. On Friday, however, the tone of the protest changed drastically. Throughout the whole of Friday, students who were not protesting were barred from entering the library by FMF. Later in the day, when private security arrived to close and lock the library for the day, the protesters refused to leave. FMF was told that they would be given five minutes to leave before more security would arrive to forcibly remove them. The security officers, however, did not allot the full five minutes for the students to leave the library, and within two minutes, the students were being beaten, strangled and pepper-sprayed by private security. One young woman had a seizure after being pepper-sprayed, but was not allowed to leave the building until she had a second seizure, minutes later.
For the past week, the library and many classroom buildings at SU have been completely closed off to the student body. The classrooms that are open are consistently being disrupted by protesters. Many of my classes have been cancelled this week due to the knowledge that the lecture would most likely be disrupted. Test days are particularly nerve-wracking, as FMF participants often run through classrooms and tear up partially completed tests. The FMF’s goal in this action is to say “hey, if your test gets torn up, you can come back another day and take it again. But if fees get raised again, we will not be able to come back. We won’t get another chance at this”. That is a really powerful message.
I’m not going to pretend like I fully understand what is going on here; I don’t. However, I am trying my best to understand. FMF holds open forums every day in one of the buildings they currently are occupying on campus. Last night, I attended a discussion forum that was hosted by an FMF representative as well as a representative from the finance department at Stellenbosch University. Both of the hosts tried their best to present information in an unbiased fashion, with which the audience could form their own, informed opinion. As an international student, I did not feel qualified to offer comments in that conversation, but I did, and do, feel compelled to listen to every opinion and discussion I can find.

As an international student in a foreign country, it is often difficult to position yourself in the culture you find yourself in. It has taken me almost three months to feel comfortable and justified in a discussion of South African politics and justice, and even now, I still have a lot of underlying discomfort. But I am learning that the best thing you can do in any and all situations abroad is listen. Listen to as many people as you can find, and listen to understand, not to respond.