Not many of us get to experience two NUS national conferences in as many weeks. At the beginning of April, myself and Melanie Ward got to do just that, as within 48 hours of the close of NUS UK’s conference, we found ourselves at the inaugural conference of the newly formed South African Union of Students (SAUS), held at Stellenbosch University in the Western Cape.

The trip, funded by the South African government and the British Council, came as a result of the work that Melanie has been doing to build meaningful ties between NUS Scotland and student movements across the world, including South Africa and Iraq.

NUS has a long and proud history of solidarity with the South African student movement. During the 1980s NUS played and active and important role in the fall of the apartheid regime, as the movement united in forcing Barclays Bank to withdraw its financial investments in the regime and campaigned vehemently against the Thatcher government’s refusal to condemn the appalling segregation and bigotry that tore at the social and economic fabric of a nation no longer governed by its own people.

This history was recalled by Melanie during her speech at the inaugural session of the SAUS conference; a powerful reminder that international solidarity is not only worthwhile, but meaningful. As she spoke of NUS’ internationalism work in the 1980s it seemed a far cry from the NUS of today, where our membership frequently questions whether we should act on international issues. And who can blame them when our debates seem to be restricted almost exclusively to perennial rows about the Middle East where one side attempts to engage in one-upmanship against the other? Yet in the 1970s and 1980s it was this same organisation, acting as one with the Labour movement, that demanded an end to apartheid and received the thanks of the anti-apartheid movement when we collectively succeeded.

Attending the inaugural conference of SAUS was an enormous privilege, not least because it was the first time that a united student movement – which like NUS encompassed both Further and Higher Education – had come together since it was disbanded by the apartheid government.

In the evening of the first day of the conference, we took part in a dinner with the delegates, attended by the Vice President of South Africa and the Minister for Education, both of whom we had the opportunity to meet with. Listening to the speeches by the Education Minister and the newly elected president of SAUS, a women called Sibu Sibiya, we were struck by just how similar the educational challenges discussed that evening were to the ones we had discussed just days before at the Annual Conference of NUS UK. It seems that South Africa is already ahead of England in terms of quality assurance and enhancement and more determined to deal with gender inequality than our own society. Like the UK, South Africa is trying hard to deal with the gross inequality that exists within Higher Education admissions. Myself and Melanie were both able to impress upon the South African education minister that charging students for their education, which is currently under consideration, would impede any progress made towards a fair and equal education system. The struggle for Free Education is, and remains, a global one.

Listening to the songs of struggle and emancipation during our dinner, Mel and I both reflected on the fact that whilst most of delegates in the room the black, the room we were sitting in was at a university that was overwhelmingly white. It made Oxbridge look like a model of diversity. The legacy of apartheid has yet to be fully overcome.

During the conference we were taken to Robben Island, the location of Mandela’s imprisonment during apartheid. During the apartheid years Robben Island became internationally known for its institutional brutality. The duty of those who ran the Island and its prison was to isolate opponents of apartheid and to crush their morale. Some freedom fighters spent more than a quarter of a century in prison for their beliefs. It remains standing today, we were told, not simply as a bleak reminder of a dark chapter in human history, but as a powerful and positive reminder of ‘the triumph of the human spirit over enormous hardship and adversity’.

After leaving the SAUS conference we flew north to Johannesburg, where we were driven Tshwane, perhaps better known by its imperial name, Pretoria. While we were there we met a number of officials in the Education Ministry and the South African equivalent of the Quality Assurance Agency. We also visited the Union Buildings, the seat of the South African government. We had been invited to the office of the Presidency to meet with one of Thabo Mbeke’s advisors on youth policy.

During our free time, we visited Johannesburg and the headquarters of the ruling party, the ANC, the sister party of the Labour Party. While we were there, we met Kgalema Motlanthe, the ANC Secretary General, before meeting with the youth and student wings of the party.

Together with our comrades from SASCO (the equivalent of Labour Students in South Africa) we drove to Soweto, a nearby township famous as being the place where Mandela had grown up. The beautiful surroundings and apparent wealth of Stellenbosch seemed a million miles away as we saw the absolute poverty that some people were still living in.

Together we visited the monument to the Soweto Uprisings, the place in 1976 where black students led an uprising against the apartheid government before being brutally crushed by armed militias.

My experience in South African will remain with me for some time. Having listened to the experiences of those who suffered first hand at the mercy of the apartheid regime, I still cannot understand why so many western governments – including our own – failed to act. When Young Conservatives wore t-shirts in the 1980s wore t-shirts saying “Hang Mandela” did they deliberately choose to ignore the suffering of an oppressed people? And are those who oppose NUS engaging in internationalism work today really saying that our predecessors were wrong to take a stand?

Many positive links have been built with SAUS and the South African Education Ministry as a result of our trip. I hope to be able to invite a delegation from SAUS to attend our next Annual Conference and we are currently examining the possibility of a further delegation from NUS UK going over to take part in building the South African student movement. I have also been invited to speak at the South African High Commission in London on the 16th June to mark the 30th anniversary of the Soweto Uprisings, which is a great honour and privilege.

I hope and believe that our history of involvement with the student movement in South Africa can continue for years to come. I know that the lessons and experiences from my trip in April will stay with me for a lifetime.

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