Seminar: Student protests in South Africa as new social action spaces

  Photo: Lihlumelo Toyana

The current student protests at South African universities can be understood within a broader context of (dis)continuities of apartheid. Although these protests have been happening at historically black universities for some time, only since they affected historically white universities have they become (inter)national news. South Africa’s current economic situation and the impact of neo-liberalism on global Higher Education mean that state funding has been drastically reduced. In this climate, students are trying to shape a new movement around an agenda of decolonization and a critique of transformation at universities. Transformation is slow, and not enough is done to redress power inequalities. The curriculum has hardly changed and fails to sufficiently reflect African realities in a global world. The student movement resists alignment with national political parties and charts new trajectories of popular politics and organizing change. New social action spaces are emerging globally: they are mass based, often organized around a specific issue and resist hierarchical structures. But new forms of organizing reveal new vulnerabilities. In student assemblies, it is difficult to make space for plural perspectives on race identity, class politics, issues of feminism and patriarchy. There are big gaps between students and between the universities, but both sides are asking: what should public (South) African universities in the 21st century look like?