ABSTRACT

This chapter attempts to identify the specific material-demographic-social base on which school and youth politics is constructed. It is a condensed and reworked version of 'street Sociology and Pavement Politics: Aspects of Youth and Student Resistance in Cape Town, 1985', Journal of Southern African Studies. One of the most influential theoretical explanations of radicalism in 'youth politics' is the notion of a 'social generation' or 'generation unit'. The radicalism of the late 1960s and early 1970s – Hobsbawm argues – sprang from a period of generalised capitalist crisis, which bore acutely upon intellectuals and students, their numbers swollen by the growth of scientific technology and tertiary education. The short-term demands of student movements – from the South African Students' Organisation (SASO) and the South African Students' Movement (SASM) through to the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), and the South African National Students' Congress (SANSCO) – have addressed themselves directly to the manifest shortcomings of the education system.