A talk delivered at the AZASCO National Students Congress held at the University of Western Cape ,Cape Town 14 April 2001 by Mosibudi Mangena.

Great revolutionaries such us Mao Tse Tung, Liu Shaoqi and others always stressed the critical need for any organisation to learn from experience.You cannot grow politically, culturally, educationally and otherwise if experience teaches you nothing. It is so basic that even toddlers know it. Even before they can speak they learn and identify what is hot, cold, tasty, hurting and so on. Yet, although we instinctively know that experience is the best teacher, intellectually we tend to ignore it. Seldom do we deliberately and purposely pause to sum our experiences honestly and frankly.

It is therefore a credit to AZASCO that it incorporated reflection as an element of its theme in this congress. For purposes of this discourse, the term is synonymous with taking stock, assessment, post mortem, review and so on. But you can only take stock effectively and meaningfully if you are frank, honest and dispassionate. If you are partial, self- opinionated and pompous, then your self-assessment cannot be anything but a huge waste of time and energy.

Your attempt at reflection and redress will be adversely affected by the fact that as a student organisation, you have a rapid change of both membership and leadership. No sooner had people experienced certain things within the organisation than they are out of Universities and Technikons, and therefore out of your organisation. A large chunk of information, experience and insight go with them. But this should by no means minimise the need to reflect and redress. Of course that process would be enhanced by inviting some of your former leaders to attend your congresses as observers, who might then share some of their insights with you. 

Obviously, this exercise of reflection and redress is more meaningful and effective when those who are intimately involved in the organisation and its processess and activities are involved. They know the issues better than anybody else. But as you grapple with these issues and the processes of reflection you may care to consider the following:

1. 1. Have you been true and loyal to your ideological foundations?

Is there a study of Black Consciousness and Socialism in AZASCO?

Do you have debates and discussions on these ideological positions?

Are your members therefore steeped and cultivated cadres of this movement?

Or are you just Black Conscious in word but not in substance?

These are very important and crucial questions which may help all of us to understand the inner strength of AZASCO. A philosophy and ideology guide an organisation and its members in almost everything they do. An organisation that lacks ideological foundations tends to lack backbone and to be swayed by any wind that blows, however weak that wind is.

2. 2. Are you Black first and students second?

This of course flows from the previous points we discussed relating to ideological self- cultivation. Your Blackness and therefore your experience and that of your community informs your behaviour and your priorities. The fact that 7.3 million of your people live in mikhukhu and up to six million of them have no safe drinking water should help to shape your thinking and orientation.

The fact that the face and image of cholera in this country is Black, or specifically African, should affect your consciousness. It means wherever people hear the word "cholera" they see your face and whenever they see a mukhukhu, they know that a person of your features, culture, language or heritage lives in it. We are the mekhukhu people of this country of our forebears. How does that make you feel, especially if you are Black conscious and you are concerned about the image, personality and dignity of Black people?

3. 3. How deep or shallow is your identity with your own people?

An important component or aspect of Black Conscious is Black Solidarity. In what way does your own solidarity with your own people manifest itself? Those Black people, who are poor, unemployed, landless and so on; do they have a son or a daughter in you? Are you engaged in any practical programmes of self-sacrifice in solidarity with your people?

Or are you an educational snob that tries its best to increase the distance between itself and its people?

Are you class conscious?

Do you think you are better than most of your people and that therefore you have very little to do with them?

In most societies, certainly in our own society a little while back, young people, but particularly students, acted as the conscience of that society. They pointed out and shouted about the ills, injustices and shortcomings of their society. Do you do the same?

In one of my talks to AZASCO in the near past, I related how SASO, your predecessor, engaged in community development programmes. The SASO students went into the poor communities of Dimbaza, Zanempilo, Winterveld, Phoenix and other similar places to engage in projects related to literacy, health, handicrafts and so on in order to identify themselves with their communities, to help solve some of those problems and in the process conscientise those communities.

Most of the problems, blemishes and imperfections that SASO struggled with are still there, staring us all in the face. Racism, while not entrenched in the statute book anymore, is still a scourge in our country .Is AZASCO screaming about it? 

The SASO policy manifesto declared that the objective of the BCM is to create an open and egalitarian society where the colour of your skin will not be a point of reference.Do we have such a society? If not, what is AZASCO doing about it? Has the present political and social dispensation depoliticised students in particular and young people in general? If so, what is AZASCO doing to remedy the situation?

Does AZASCO just roll over and allow itself to be depoliticised?

There are enormous problems in high schools that involve your younger sisters and brothers. Black kids are failing matric like flies. In particular, less than one per cent of African students pass Mathematics and Physical Science at higher grade. Which means that less and less of them can enter institutions of higher learning like you have. It also means that we will produce fewer and fewer doctors, dentists, engineers, farmers, chemists, pharmacists, accountants, land surveyors, computer and other information technology competent people. That in turn means that Blacks will continue to exist at the margins of the economy of their country. Can AZASCO intervene and do something about it?

4. 4. In its ten years of existence, thousands of students must have passed through the hands of AZASCO. Where are they now?

Are they assets of the BCM in particular, and of our society in general? If most of them have disappeared, why is it so?

Did AZASCO fail to conscientise them enough or has the BCM as a whole failed to harness them for the general good?

Admittedly these are a lot of questions, but your theme has asked for them. They are meant to contribute to your debates on these important questions. But as you reflect and plan the road ahead for this important student organisation, do not forget the high points in the life of AZASCO. don't overlook the support it has given to thousands of students on our campuses. Do take into account the proud place it occupies in the configuration of the Black Consciousness Movement and the contribution it has made to the health and vigour of AZAPO, its mother body. In that way you will be able to make an objective and balanced assessment of AZASCO and chart a proper path for its forward movement.

MOSIBUDI MANGENA -AZAPO PRESIDENT
14 APRIL 2001