OPINION

Published Monday, October 27, 2003
Déjà vu Paulo Freire 2003
By Lazarus H. Joseph
APPIAN STAFF WRITER

My path had crossed with the bearded educator before, twenty-three years before in fact. Only then I did not know he was a bearded Brazilian, only that he was a friend and a guide in a most oppressive and explosive time.

It was 1980 in a South Africa gripped by the second wave of student uprising after the momentous 1976 uprising – again resisting the designs of a powerful apartheid regime. The place was the University of the Western Cape; ironically, it was an institution intended by the Apartheid ideologues to develop a middle class allied to their project of white domination. Mass meetings, disruptions of the academic program, riot police raids, early morning security police arrests, disappearances, detentions, solitary confinement and death became part of a discourse wrestling with the desire to define education for liberation. The sounds of South African freedom songs, Negro freedom spirituals, “Teach your Children” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and “The Wall” by Pink Floyd intermingled with attempts to come to understand the nature of our oppression and the action we needed to take.

The physical battles with the police and the verbal ones with detractors during mass meeting were followed by intensive political discussions during the evening. The awareness that isolated student resistance was not sustainable; given the overwhelming impunity with which the state detained, jailed and killed, the discussion shifted to other methods of resistance.

It was then that I had a clandestine visit by the banned educator – late one night a photocopied chapter was delivered with strict instructions to read and share. His visit was not a surprise, as previous individuals had made their turn in a similar clandestine way – Amilcar Cabral and Steve Biko to name a couple. The excitement of their visits, as with his, was mixed with trepidation, as the possession of banned literature meant years in jail, something my parents in a faraway rural town warned me would happen should I become involved with politics.

Freire’s ideas were welcomed as they provided direction for those who wanted to do more to affect real change. Freire's love of the poor and his belief in their agency reached out to us, despite his own persecution, harassment and banning. We focused on his ideas of conscientization, the role of this education for liberation to develop an insight not only into the systemic nature of oppression but also an understanding that must lead to individual and collective transformative agency. That late night meeting provided me with a basis to sustain the resistance that was sparked with the 1976 student uprising. Freire’s ideas transformed our own feelings of disempowerment in the face of a brutal and overpowering state into an optimism fueled by the understanding that through conscientization, the oppressed can liberate themselves and their oppressor. As young students, we were able to implement this into our community involvement, resulting in a civil society organization that provided not only voice to the oppressed communities, but also agency to affect change. It was organizations like these that later formed the basis of the popular anti-apartheid movement: the United Democratic Front. Freire’s pedagogy became the basis of many of our classroom practice leading. Implementing this was difficult and not without its dangers; the state-led, brutal murder of the Cradock community leader and teacher, Matthew Goniwe, attests to this.

Meeting the bearded educator again twenty years later in a rather depressing context, when arrogance of the powerful is again subverting our common humanity, brought back feelings of cautious optimism. There is hope after all if Freire is not forgotten at an influential institution like Harvard. His message, though a powerful one for those who are willing to listen, can be watered down if it is only personalized and not linked to the systemic structures of oppression.

My sincere hope is that the old man will enlighten me more about the underlying apprehension for his revolution I have sensed when discussing his ideas.

Lazarus H. Joseph is an Ed.M. candidate in the International Education Policy program.