Drink water and mind your own business has been a famous and a rapidly growing trend in the South African social media platforms. The phrase in most instances is used for different reasons. It is usually prescribed between women in achieving hair growth, booty grown and generally a key to happiness. Rapper, song writer AKA in early 2019 was also heard uttering this famous phrase on his Instagram, again, encouraging people to drink water and stay away from other people’s business.

In the general sense of things, who is AKA in South Africa and what makes him so popular? Besides him dropping killer hits year after year, AKA is notorious for leaving his baby mother for her friend and in turn insulting her on social media. Naturally, I cannot speculate on the truthfulness of what caused the fights but that is not what I am getting at but the actions of people who constantly tell us to mind our business who might also turn out to be abusive towards us. My intention with this piece is to diverge from the culture of drink water and mind your business especially in a country as South Africa.

Minding your business I argue is the prime of ignorance. It is on most instances depicted in memes when a person drinks tea/juice whilst there is a fire in the background. This however should not transpire to reality. Minding your business actually collaborates with what Assata Shakur once said. Assata warned us on remaining silent in instances of war, calling such people liberals and no good for the revolution. She was saying this during the time when America was under severe oppression by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). In Summary, the KKK were a White supremacist hate group that perpetuated anti Blackness sentiments in their organization. Assata uttered these words when she and the Black Panthers were fighting for liberation which was inclusive of socio economic rights of Black people especially women and children in America. Her prime argument was that ‘minding your business’ makes you a liberal. Someone who is in between the lines and whose ideals can easily be associated with the oppressors because if one does not fight against oppression or any form of injustice, that makes them an ally of the perpetuator of such injustice/ oppression.

Coming back to South Africa, South Africa is a country infamous of its gender based violence (GBV). The current statistic on GBV is that 1 in 3 women in South Africa experience sexual and/or physical violence. Now, with a statistic like this, South Africans when Masechaba, the former Metro FM presenter came forward on a crime done to Babes Wodumo by her ‘former’ lover on a radio interview; South Africans, were at war condemning Masechaba on why she had to meddle into people’s business, something that the abuser later re-iterated by saying that people must mind their own business. Is this the business that we mean when we say drink water and mind your own business?

What would have happened if parties like the EFF did not intervene in the Alex illegal evictions during the month of May 2019? What would have happened if the community sat back and minded its own business? Were we going to let innocent babies and women go cold in this cold weather in the name of minding our business?

The problem with minding your business is not new. We saw it with #FMF when a group of students instead of participating in the movement were taking pictures and posting them along the hashtag #FeesMustFall. The issue with minding your business then seems to not being an issue of ignorance, but it cuts deep into the class struggle, making it an elitist’s kind of a culture. The rich and the privileged are always the ones that would rather ‘Netflix and chill’ when the world is burning, but can South Africa really afford this culture of minding your business?

I conclude that Sibongile, an NSFAS student waiting for their first NSFAS living allowance in June and Dudu, whose husband beat her up to a pulp every month on the 25^th after having a good time with his boys cannot afford a drink water and mind your business culture.

At the Potchefstroom campus of the North-West University (NWU), there exists a big monster that black students are confronted with and that monster is systematic racism in the form of White Afrikaner Hegemony. Despite 25 years after so-called democracy, in the dawn of 2019, Afrikaans is still the primary and predominant medium of instruction at the NWU – Potchefstroom campus. Majority of the classes are still being given in Afrikaans and black students who do not understand Afrikaans are given interpretation services to use. Therefore, there is a system that uses Afrikaans as a tool to exclude black students.

In addition, white Afrikaner students are prioritised at the expense of black students. Moreover, every time black students stand up and resist against this white Afrikaner racist system, they are told by white Afrikaner students that “you knew when you came here that this is an Afrikaans university; be grateful, we are giving you interpretation services…” All of these statements are utter nonsense! Firstly, there is no such thing as an Afrikaans university, that is, according to the Higher Education Act of South Africa. As the said Act defines, we have institutions of higher learning. Meaning, the institution is a public institution that is inclusive and everyone is welcome at the institution. This includes blacks. However, this does not apply at the Potchefstroom campus as it is kept as a harbour and bastion for white Afrikaners.

Secondly, interpretation services are ineffective, useless and insufficient. Black students are subjected to second-hand information and interpreters who do not understand the jargon and/or vocabulary of the module, and at most times the interpreters cannot catch up with the speed in which the lecturer is giving class, thus, black students are left behind in the classroom.

Furthermore, the remnants of Apartheid at this campus are not just in terms of the language policy. It is also in the campus residences (hostels). Majority of the students staying in hostels are white Afrikaner students, the same applies to the total number of students on the campus. And the reason why it is kept this way in hostels is because hostels at the Potchefstroom campus of the NWU are meant to safeguard white Afrikaner traditions and initiation practices. Hostels at the aforementioned campus are not about providing accommodation and a roof over the heads of students but about entrenching dehumanising, racist, sexist and fascist initiation practices driven by white Afrikaners and resembling a white Afrikaner culture. What’s more, the white Afrikaner culture perpetuates itself through the hostel meetings being conducted primarily in Afrikaans as well.

As a result of all of this, the Potchefstroom campus of the NWU is a white Afrikaner enclave. An Apartheid Institution in 2019! An institution that maintains a system that uses Afrikaans and Afrikaner culture as tools to exclude, oppress, marginalise, isolate and degrade black students.

Similarly, the white Afrikaner system doesn’t end there. The marketing and public relations office of the campus targets white Afrikaner-dominated schools in order to recruit potential first year students to the campus. White Afrikaner-dominated schools in Stellenbosch, Pretoria, Bloemfontein, Potchefstroom, and even in Orania and Namibia, just to mention a few, are the constant recipients of the campus’ marketing initiatives. Schools in townships and rural areas near to Potchefstroom are neglected. Black kids in Potchefstroom townships like Ikageng, Promosa and Mohadin, just to mention a few, are not marketed to. Thus, the enrolment at the campus remains predominantly white.

The hell doesn’t end there for black students. Black students are still excluded at the campus with regards to the SRC elections process. At the Potchefstroom campus of the NWU, black students are not allowed to contest SRC elections under the banner of their political organisations. Moreover, they are not allowed to openly campaign publicly for their candidacy.

One can only contest as an independent candidate and the campaign process is structured in such a way that only white students benefit and black students excluded. Hence, since 1994 the SRC of the campus has always been predominantly white (13 white Afrikaners out of 15 members).

In light of the above, this is the hell that black students go through at the NWU – Potchefstroom campus!

Justice is yet to arrive at our campus like it did at the Universities of Free State, Pretoria and Stellenbosch, as these institutions have taken radical steps to scrap Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. And the Constitutional Court has legally affirmed their decision.

Frantz Fanon once said: “each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it.” We as the oppressed black students of the NWU – Potchefstroom campus have identified our mission. And our mission is to eradicate Afrikaans as a medium of instruction and phase in English and English only as the primary medium of instruction. Afrikaans Must Fall!

No Retreat! No Surrender! Victory Is Certain! Hasta La Victoria Siempre!