INVESTIGATING THE CONTEXT, HISTORY AND THE STUDENT ACTIVISM IN THE #FEESMUSTFALL PROTESTS
Back to Page
Authors: Quraysha Ismail Sooliman
Keywords: neoapartheid, epistemic injustice, racialised history, decolonial
Abstract: This paper interrogates the contesting narratives that co-existed during the #FeesMustFall (#FMF) protests at the various universities in South Africa since 2015. The significance of this research is underscored by the context that is obfuscated from the dominant narratives - that of a racialised historical violence and epistemic and social injustice. The paper highlights the problems in limiting the narratives on the student activism to “leaderless” protests or as being driven by partisan ideology. It also contests the frameworks of language and “black violence” as has been streamlined through the mainstream western media. I argue that the protests exposed the different forms of violence and racism that still exist in the westernised South African universities and in institutional culture. The protests further animated the black student public intellectual’s projection into “being” and their confrontation with history, violence and power. The fixation with subjective violence however, detracted from the greater, yet hidden narrative – that of the possibility of violence as ubiquitous in human social relations. Violence is also used to negate power. In confronting a powerful racist history and systems of racism, the #Fallists reference to the on-going complex levels of violence (social death), lived as a reality by black South Africans, could be understood as a form of social power to unchain the forced consensus around “black violence” and “black ineptitude.” The manifestation of these complex and interwoven narratives is inferred through an analysis of encounters by the black student activist public intellectual with an academia that has largely been incapable of comprehending or conceptualising the pedagogical critique and epistemic challenge of the #Fallists. It also ponders the collaboration and relationship between the state and university as mechanisms of control to preserve the system and structure of neo-apartheid in a post-1994 South African society. The paper contextualises all of these narratives by arguing that the relationship between violence and power is complex and necessitates a historical framework. In this regard, the #FMF protests exposed the situational conditions and constraints that facilitate and induce violence and complex patterns of enchainment that continue to exist in the spaces of learning and academia. The #FMF protests were thus also a protest against this enchainment.