Learning through experience : an analysis of student leaders' reflections on the 1985-6 revolt in Western Cape schools
This thesis explores the inter-relationship between theory and practice in a number of ways. I shall mainly be concerned with analysing the effects of participation in the 1985-6 Western Cape struggles upon the political consciousness of former student leaders. A representative, random sample of the 1985 Student Representative Council members of a certain high school in Cape Town was taken and respondents were then interviewed individually during the last quarter of 1990. The subject of the thesis is closely tied to the particular method used to investigate it. I shall argue and present reasons why the ethnographic interviewing commonly used in cultural anthropology is theoretically appropriate as means to collect empirical material for use in the analysis of the topic. Arising from the methodology, a secondary focus of this study concerns the interaction between the biases (or "theory") which social scientists bring to their research and the actual, raw data collected. This variation of the theory-practice nexus is not examined in detail, only when it is directly relevant to the main analysis. How was all of the foregoing arrived at? I shall show that the interplay between action and thought was central to the events which occurred during the 1985-6 rebellion. It is this fact which justifies the study of the above topic and which led to conceptualizing of the research as outlined. In addition, this same feature of the uprising can be used to examine the political consciousness of the ex-students. In other words, their present-day perceptions in regard to past experiences in mass struggle can be analysed in terms of the boycott seen as action (practice) and the boycott seen as symbolising ideas (thought). The main conclusion reached is that there is both a unity and a disjunction of theory and practice in the political outlook of respondents. On the one hand, interviewees understand and evaluated those events in which they directly participated. This was done in contradictory ways and showed a general move away from militancy towards conservatism. On the other hand, the great majority of respondents are still struggling to make sense of the wider social issues produced during the uprising. These aspects of respondent thinking are viewed in relation to one another and I try to give explanations for them. Finally, I suggest what the contemporary significance of the above conclusions for the struggle for socialism could be.
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