The Big Read: SA too schooled in violence

Like Kevin Carter's photograph of the starving Sudanese child stalked by a patient vulture in the background, last week's photograph of a student, a brick and a car was - from a photographic point of view - brilliant.

The student seemed to swivel on one leg as he let rip with a brick that slammed into the window of a car trying to enter a Cape Town university campus.

The brick is caught in flight, appearing to ricochet off the passenger side window, with student, stone and vehicle all appearing in one long action shot.

That picture will remain in memory for a very long time. The photographer had to be in the right place at the right time with the right equipment to capture the drama and dynamism of a student protest in one compelling image.

Like Carter, the photographer in this case is likely to have many sleepless nights when the full horror of that picture eventually sinks in. What kind of depraved human being would launch a brick at the heads of fellow students, given the possibility of serious brain injury and even death? How can someone with this capacity for random violence even be considered for a place in higher education? How did it come to this?

It is a tough week to ask such questions about personal responsibility and conduct of students in the light of the public meltdown in parliament. Did this student take his cue from his seniors in government - that public violence, trash talk and confrontation are acceptable, and the new normal within state and society?

I did not see any public condemnation of this violent act from the same people who would throw an almighty fit at the slightest hint of racism; this kind of violence we tolerate. What does this say about us as a society, quite apart from the kind of reckless violence on display?

Imagine what an outcry would have followed if the two students with head wounds, wiping blood from their faces, had been black and the assailant who hurled the brick white. This is where many ordinary white citizens lose faith in our capacity to be fair and just; here a double standard is applied - the black student does not draw the kind of condemnation that a white student would in the same situation.

Then the separate but difficult issue. The violent black student is clearly frustrated and you have to be deaf not to recognise the pain and danger in the question from the protester: "Why must they learn while we struggle?"

It is a fair question that strikes at the heart of our social justice commitments. Why must access to higher education be determined by your ability to pay? It is, of course, a question I have raised previously in this space and one that demands urgent responses from the government, institutions and society alike.

Until we do, desperados like this violent black student will continue to hurl bricks at the privileged.

The question is more complex. Government financial aid to poor students stands at record levels. But demand for these limited funds is also unprecedented. What is to be done?

Valiant efforts such as those of Johannesburg students to raise R1-million must be applauded, but it is a drop in the ocean and it is not sustainable. One student needs to be supported for each year of a four-year qualification and that wipes out R1-million when tuition, accommodation, books and transportation are all accounted for.

We can arrest the brick-throwing student and charge him criminally, but the problem does not go away.

With every year that passes, more and more students qualify for higher education but will not have the funds to study. Once again campuses will be trashed, classes interrupted and teaching time lost.

In the meantime we have a problem with the response of citizens to injustice. Whether it is the fracas in parliament or the brick-throwing outside of those chambers, both events reflect the failure of education.

Education, after all, is not the pursuit or achievement of paper qualifications. It is the acquisition of a set of values that elevates minds over muscles. It is the conviction that ideas trump violence on any day. It is that deeply ingrained understanding that the freedom of expression can easily be lost in practice, even if it remains inked in the constitution. It is a commitment that, in a democracy, violent means do not justify noble ends.