Description
Asinamali means "we have no money" - a phrase that was often sung in the struggle against apartheid. Since the official, if not necessarily the ideological end, of apartheid theoretically bowed to the demand made in the Freedom Charter of 1955 - that "The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall Be Opened" - this collection of essays takes as its central discussion the topic of whether the apparent freeing of the South African people from oppression has led to a concomitant levelling of the educational playing field. In the 10 years since the "end" of Apartheid, the south African university system has been rapidly commodified - with the result that poor students are increasingly being excluded from university education, often at gunpoint - and research and teaching is increasingly organised in the interest of elites. This post-Apartheid commodification of education is being vigorously contested by repeated student struggles, with the result that the old language of oppression is back and functioning as heavily as ever. A project of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa, ASINAMALI seeks to explain the reasons for student protests, outlining what is at stake when the institutions of contemporary imperialism reorganise African education in the interests of their neoliberal project. Students are dying in Africa in defence of a freedom they have never been granted - ASINAMALI seeks to redress this balance before it is too late.
