According to Ndlozi, universities are precisely the spaces in which the contestation of ideas should take place. He touched on two recent issues within the university context. First, the call by students for the removal of Afrikaans as a language of tuition during the Afrikaans Must Fall protests. He said that this would allow for black and white students to be in the same intellectual space and therefore challenge each other. Ndlozi said, “The Afrikaans that must fall is the institutional one, [as] it perpetuates segregation”. This was met with loud applause. Second was the problem of rape culture in the university that needs to be done away with. He explained that the man that society has built does not respect women and their bodies, which in turn promotes rape culture. To end rape culture, Ndlozi posited, would be to breed a better man in society.
Over and above issues related to the university, he spoke about pressing national issues. One of the matters he put emphasis on was the government’s high reliance on investors to improve the economy, but that in the last 21 years of democracy investors have not had an impact on the economy. According to Ndlozi, outside of investors, there needs to be a more stringent focus on macroeconomic policies. This would require South Africans investing and using locally produced goods and services. He added that markets have never in themselves developed any economy and that thriving international industries were founded on colonialism.
Ndlozi highlighted that when students leave university there will be no support for entrepreneurship. As such, South Africa needs a government that does not shy away from the economy. Ndlozi identified the television industry as a market, saying, “There are no factories for television in South Africa, but all of you watch TV. We have been reduced to a consumerist society.” He added that government should compile a list of things that can be produced locally and then continue to invest in them.
Ndlozi proposed that self-determination and self-sufficiency are statements of pride. “Bantu education was an assault on the black people – this is the dark abyss [out of] which we have to pull the black,” said Ndlozi. There needs to ba a perpetuation of black pride., Ndlozi commented, adding that black South Africans did not create the problem of black and white, “but [that they] have to solve it [because] proud blacks won’t steal from their own”.
Capitalism, according to Ndlozi, is only the production of goods to maximise profit. He explaind that he believed that industrialisation should be for the people and not for profit. Ndlozi finds the commodification of education therefore to be highly problematic. Ndlozi put forth to the audience that to solve these problems, education and healthcare need to be de-commodified, banks need to be nationalised, and there should be credit control, as industrialisation will need credit. For these economic aspirations Ndlozi suggested that the government should be free from corruption.
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