Student apathy

With regards to my previous post entitled “The many forms of offence” I was reminded of a politically charged discussion that I and a few other girls from my residence had over chocolate pudding in the dining hall. It was the usual setting that surrounds any political conversation: those that have nothing to say because they think its trivial, those too afraid to offend, and those (like me) who do not know much but just want to argue and the token individual pioneering the debate. We were discussing whether Jacob Zuma was a puppet for whomever or if he truly was the one that will destroy South Africa “single handily”. As you can guess, there were no Zuma supporters at that table.
The discussion went all it’s which ways with no epiphanic conclusion but the individual pioneering the debate was still fuming as we put our trays and our political thoughts into trolleys. She is one of the small handfuls of students who actually attend student forums, which deal with all the big issues at Rhodes. Her anger was geared toward the apathy and the scary fact that at every meeting it is about 25 SRC members, 5 students and some others who have to be there, who actually attend. But it is these people who "represent" the student body and have the power to change Rhodes even if that change is extremely biased and in no way reflects what us students really want. Do us students even know what we want, do we even care that there is a tiny group who are making decisions on our behalf? We are notified of these forums via posters around campus and Studentzone. It is apathy that results in people like Jacob Zuma or the like governing our country and it must stop here! Only about 1500 students registered to vote, which leaves about 1500 South African students unregistered, which halves the chance of change and please believe me when I say that it does matter what you think, in a big way!