From Apartheid to Democracy

Educating our communities Through culture for the Liberation of our Nation

Dieketseng Mosinki & Shibobo Moiloa write about the formation of the BCP which has used culture to develop education organize for the community of Bophelong.

Some of the youth of Bophelong saw the need for educating their parents differently by forming the Bocosfo Cultural Programme (BCP) in 2001. The organisation was formed for the development of education for the community of Bophelong. Its aim is for youth to identify themselves with their origins and to bring change through working class struggles. The vision of BCP is to see the community of Bophelong liberated socially, politically and economically. Bophelong is supposed to be one of the richest communities around the Vaal because it is next to factories and industries like Iscor, Vesco and Emerald Casino. But most of our parents are illiterate. They either worked at Iscor or as domestic workers during the apartheid era, and they did not get the chance to go to school. The BCP saw the importance of teaching and recruiting its community through culture because their older people used culture as an important tool to organise. Organising through culture was an important tool for workers to mobilise in the past. They performed dramas to show their anger, used poems to express their feelings and sang songs to show their dissatisfaction. They also organised themselves by performing political dramas to reach out to those who were not aware of African trade unions or black political movements that existed in those times. The BCP has been running cultural programmes that deliver a message to the community. We saw that most of our grandparents and parents had not been to school, so we educate them via culture because they cannot read or write. We make them understand the present compared to the past. We use culture not only for entertaining people but to mobilise and educate them as well.

The most important BCP achievement has been the many youth participating in its programmes. It gets more support from the community when it has meetings, cultural events, workshops and so on. We have started a learners’ structure, Concerned Learners Committee (CLC), which stands up for the rights of learners in schools. CLC caters for all schools in Bophelong and its aim is to empower the struggle of learners. CLC has also recruited learners from farm schools to come up with their issues and for BCP to assist them with the struggle.

Our weakness has been the failure to organise older people to take part in the struggle. We have also failed to stop ANC members from ruining our successful events, but fortunately we get support from the community to strengthen our good work.

The Department of Arts and Culture has shifted the responsibility of funding cultural not-for-profit organisations to the private sector. Organisations, which qualify for funding from the private sector are those who make profit or who will create jobs for certain, people in our communities. We as BCP activists think that the government and the private sectors are trying to avoid funding working class cultural groups. We cannot ask our communities for money.

We as Bocosfo, BCP and CLC invite all learners in different communities to stop celebrating June 16 but to commemorate it. June 16 is a very important event in the history of South Africa, especially for the struggle of learners. So we call upon all the working class activists to recruit learners and fill them in the halls to teach them political issues.

Dieketseng Mosinki & Shibobo Moiloa are both members of BOCOSFO in Bophelong and are active in the Concerned Learners Committee