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WELCOME TO OUR BLOG

As anyone who has participated in UConn's Education Abroad in Cape Town will tell you, there are no words to adequately explain the depth of the experiences, no narratives to sufficiently describe the hospitality of the people, and no pictures to begin to capture the exquisite scenery. Therefore this blog is only intended to provide an unfolding story of the those co-educators who are traveling together as companions on this amazing journey.

As Resident Director of this program since 2008 it is once again my privilege and honor to accompany another group of remarkable students to this place I have come to know and love.

In peace, with hope,
Marita McComiskey, PhD

(marita4peace@gmail.com)

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Charity on human rights and protests

We spent last weekend at a human rights retreat weekend on Goedgedacht Olive Farm. It was ridiculously gorgeous as can be seen from the photo above. A common feature of almost everywhere I visit in Cape Town. The activities of the weekend involved getting a foundational understanding of human rights terminology, the process of becoming a refugee and learning about human rights issues in different African countries. I really appreciated the activity where we were given a refugee status application that was written in Spanish and Creole and told to fill it out and bring it up to see if we would be accepted for asylum. The activity was meant to highlight the unfair structure of the refugee process of having to fill out an important form in a language you did not understand while also highlighting the power dynamics that exist in the process. 

My group picked Botswana as the country that we wanted to learn more about with regards to human rights issues. Each group was tasked with putting on a skit to highlight human rights issues in their chosen country to compete for two billions dollars’ worth of funding for your country to solve those issues (if only it was real!). Botswana’s biggest issues seem to be around infrastructure and technology. As always those that are in rural areas struggle with being able to have appropriate access to the resources needed in this day and age. We had a lot of fun learning about the country and our skit was the winner! YAY! The best part of the weekend though (other than the amazing food) was being able to network with some amazing fellow activists. I felt so blessed to be able to share in their knowledge, hear their journeys, accomplishments, defeats and struggles towards justice and peace in their countries. I was very grateful for all of the conversations I had with those individuals and look forward to continuing building relationships with many of them.

In other news, there was another protest held on campus by the same activist group that has led the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall movement (successfully) on-campus. This time the focus of the protest was on the issue of lack of housing accommodations on-campus for Black students. The activist group asserts that the administration gives priority of on-campus housing to White and international students instead of Black students. The activists constructed a shack similar to the informal housing shacks that exist within the townships outside Jameson Hall which is residence hall on-campus. The protest quickly escalated though with the shack being set on fire along with some expensive paintings, a van (see below) and a bus on campus. It is still unknown whether it was the activist group who set fire to university property. Investigations have begun into how this escalated and student protestors have been jailed for their involvement with the activist group. Protests are nothing new to South Africa or to this university. However, what struck me the most was the reactions of many White students at UCT and the ugly, ignorant messages they posted on social media regarding the activist’s methods and actions even before things started going up in flames (bad pun intended). It reminded me of the backlash that many of the protests that I’d helped organized on campus back home received and our protests never escalated to that level. I also couldn’t help but notice an uncomfortably familiar pattern with the university administrators being reactive instead of proactive as now there are significant talks of more housing being created on-campus and more Black students receiving notifications that they now have a place to lay their heads at night. Many of these Black students come from the townships and live very far away from campus. To be denied housing on campus renders them homeless. And how can you study properly and be successful as a student if you do not know where you will sleep at night or find your next meal? I find myself returning to some familiar quotes in this moment; the first from Frederick Douglass who said that “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will”. They won’t move unless you move them and I support these activists in taking a stand for the injustice that they see occurring in their community. The second is from Martin Luther King Jr. who said that "A riot is the language of the unheard". People only protest when they feel like their voices are not being heard. They only resort to violence when they feel suffocated and like there are no other options. While we look at the protestors actions we must also take into consideration the effects of what consistent inaction, refusal to listen to their perspective and denial of an existing issue from a power source does to an individual. Either way, the struggle continues.


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