UNAM SRC; A Body Totally Compromised

There are self-imposed myths, limitations and serious contradictions in the UNAM management, and SRC that beg for an honest engagement and critical analysis. The student body’s potential to produce and nurture leaders of an astute intellectual and social caliber, is confined and reduced to false notions that novices that consumed university literature, popular for the wrong reasons, in favor with management, with an average academic record, and a sense of leadership experience qualifies a student to be SRC member. This is a fatal flaw and has set forth a bad precedence for the past, present and future SRC, and has thus devalued the body, rendering it ineffective and out of touch with the masses.

The SRC lacks political orientation and consciousness, members are not held accountable, while the financial process is a bureaucracy that lacks transparency. The SRC Constitution is vague and begs for critical amendments, to reflect and respond to the needs, demands and characteristics of the current state of affairs. While both the SRC and Electoral Commission equally lacks independence from management.

This has created a situation where the SRC decide the fates of the students without their active contribution to those decisions; the SRC should not act a decision making body, but a decision implementing body! Students have been reduced to a mere voting fodder that is only seriously engaged at the SRC Manifesto, when candidates want their votes, only to be remembered the following year for the same reason. Students are not engaged on every issue, students are not leading with the SRC and ideas are birthed without their input.

The SRC doesn’t exist in a vaccum, it is an integral component of a broader pattern of representatives in society. Hence the individuals who get elected are not just for the SRC and its university but are the face of the future of this country and it’s a future that has been compromised. The SRC now genuine representatives of management continue to be more invested and ever dedicated to entertainment events instead of policy reform.

As a result UNAM is no longer a factory where student leaders are made; it is not a breeding ground for political leaders, for they don’t find a voice or inspiration here. This is because UNAM management doesn’t tolerate and promote academic thought and freedom, especially radical and militant views.

In that regard, if it is to achieve the objectives that are espoused in its constitution, the SRC should assume their responsibility to be that of determining the politics of the day and leading public opinion. The SRC should assume the role of activism, as Mngxitama observes; “it has to be a weapon of students against ignorance, injustice, racism, patriarchy, homophobia, tribalism, neo-colonialism, and against oppression, exploitation and discrimination.”

This responsibility will require the SRC to stand on clear intellectual and ideological grounds of Pan-Afrikanism, Radical Feminism and Black Consciousness. The SRC must be in liason with NANSO, the umbrella of student activists and the political umbrella of all students.

The SRC must be a body capacitated with individuals that have a contextual and practical understanding of student governance; this will ensure their ability to contribute significantly to broader objectives of national development and serve as a cornerstone of policy analysis for government.

This is a humongous responsibility that needs the most dedicated and capacitated crop of student leaders, it is not a task for any ambitious student. This is because leaders are made, not born, and the notion that “everyone is a leader”, perpetuates an untruth that has found home in the minds of young people that are politically unconscious, they are going to fail dismally to locate the SRC in the broader sense of politics of society it belongs.

* Matheus Pendapala Taa­popi is a third-year student, studying towards a Bachelor of Public Management (Hons), at the University of Namibia.

*UNAM = University of Namibia
*SRC = Students Representative Council

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Decolonizing Miss Namibia

Our national beauty pageant marked 37 years of existence this month . A project that basks in the glory and privilege legacy of colonialism, apartheid and racism facilitated by capitalism that divides, discriminates, dominates and exploit. The implications of neo-colonialism  degrades, disempowers, misinterprets and appropriates black masculine and feminine identities. For centuries the experience of colonialization entails the dehumanization, disregard and devaluing of African people’s knowledge, roles, status and expression in the broader global popular culture. In different times and places, an elite class abuses, objectifies, sexualizes, and victimizes women, reproducing a hegemonic order of class, power, privilege and pleasure, through beauty pageants as the vehicle that parades women in bikinis, pitting them against each other for the honor of a sash/tiara. As is the standard unit, beauty is measured by contrasting and displaying female bodies, within a set class prescri...
Read more

Africa’s Development and Economic Crisis: Namibia in Context

Economic, social and political inclinations in Sub-Saharan Africa profoundly demonstrate the continent in multifold crises of development, with implications threatening not only the welfare and existence of broader segments of populations but the development base for future generations. As per Aina (1993), a crisis in context of development, refers to a multi-dimensional situation by which a structure begins to experience a serious breakdown in the process of reproducing itself to sustain its survival. In terms of the nature of Africa’s crisis, for Aina, is characterized by features ranging from Africa being conflict ridden, economic growth disproportionate to population growth, increasing environmental degradation, a socio-cultural malaise of the continent, and Africa’s complacent and stagnated domestic politics defined by multiparty democracies dominated by former liberation movements with centralized authoritarian tactics and patrimonial regimes branded by strong cliental syste...
Read more

The Relationship between Crime and Poverty

There are contradictions and self-imposed myths that continue to manifest in our society that begs for critical assessment, engagement and analysis. Relatively we have a serious misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the relationship between crime and poverty, because ignorantly we have no appreciation of the historical constructs of our country and the current socio-economic status quo that are contributing factors to crime. Fallacious arguments continue to manifest in our social circles that misunderstand reasons and sources of unfavorable violent social behavior. Strategies, policies, financial and human resources have been availed to “fight and combat crime”, yet these blanket interventions, including the community policing initiative, the ‘neighborhood watch’ that operates in affluent locations with very racist tendencies, have failed to prevent crime as evidence corroborates with news in our daily newspapers. What we have set forth is a counter-revolutionary anti-black pr...
Read more