#FeesMustFall: An Internet-Age Student Movement in South Africa and the Case of the University of the Free State

ABSTRACT

How can we begin to make sense of the diversity of hashtag student movements that sprang up in South Africa in the course of 2015? In this paper we start by presenting key elements of Altbach’s empirical theory of student movements and Castells’ conceptualisation of internet-age networked movements to propose as conceptual point of departure the notion of ‘internet-age student movement’. At the case of the campus-based #SteynMustFall and #UFSFeesMustFall student movement at the University of the Free State (UFS), we illustrate the richness of data available for empirical analysis and reflect on related methodological challenges when seeking to understand internet-age student movements and the dynamic relationship between the campus-based and the country-wide movement, the territorial space and the cyberspace. We conclude by reflecting on some elements of a possible research agenda for engaging with the 2015 South African hashtag student movements.

Notes

1 MT Steyn was sixth and last president of the independent Orange Free State (OFS) (1896–1902).

2 CR Swart was the first State President of the Republic of South Africa (1961–1967).

3 We use the racial categories of black (as inclusive of the apartheid categories of African, coloured and Indian), and white as far as they are relevant to understanding the political organizing of students. For more details on conceptualisations of ‘race’ in race relations politics see Luescher (2009, 416).

4 For example, starting in mid-April 2015, #RhodesMustFall-inspired protests mushroomed across the campuses of universities in the USA, advocating for more inclusive campus cultures, and demanding the removal of statues of, and changing the names of buildings and academic units named after known slavers, racists, segregationists, etc., such as Jefferson Davies and John C. Calhoun (University of Texas), Thomas Jefferson (University of Missouri), Woodrow Wilson (Princeton and Yale), Isaac Royall Jr. (Harvard), Thomas F. Mulledy and William McSherry (Georgetown University), and others. As in South Africa, the demands often went along with vandalizing statues and plaques e.g. by spray-painting #Racist on them. The main Twitter hashtags used in the USA included #BlackOnCampus and the more generally used #BlackLivesMatter, with only few instances including the ‘ … MustFall’ tagbit, e.g. in the case of Thomas Jefferson, #JeffersonMustFall was sprayed onto his statue at University of Texas (cf. related reports in InsideHigherEd 2015; also see Moja, Luescher, and Schreiber 2015).

5 While we conclude our analysis of the hashtag student movements at the end of 2015, the beginning of 2016 brought a new phase of student activism. The student leadership used the end of the exam period for having several face-to-face meetings, including the third Neville Alexander Commemorative Conference, ‘Students Rising’, of 1 December 2015 at the University of Johannesburg, organised collectively by #FeesMustFall, #ReformPukke, #TuksUprising, #OpenStellies, #RhodesMustFall, #PatriarchyMustFall, #TheTransCollective, #BlackStudentsStokvel, and #BlackStudentMovement; and a #FeesMustFall National Summit was held at CPUT from 9 to 11 December 2015 to consider the way forward for the #FeesMustFall uprising. Upon the reopening of institutions, protests resumed in a number of universities, including UCT where the #Shackville protests by the #RhodesMustFall movement created much turmoil. Contrary to expectation, the UFS experienced probably the most traumatic event during the protests of early 2016, when on 22 February a group of staff and students who protested against outsourcing under the banner of #OutsourcingMustFall disrupted a Varsity Cup rugby match between the UFS Shimlas team and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University’s Madibaz and were violently attacked by spectators (Shange 2016). In the wake of the ‘Shimlas incident’, the UFS Bloemfontein campus experienced a night of intense student protests which was finally suppressed by riot police involving a great deal of police brutality. All UFS campuses were closed for the week of 23–26 February 2016 (UFS 2016). The racialised nature of the Shimlas incident – whereby most protesters were black and most spectators white – was followed by intense racial tensions on campus. During the protest week, students inter alia dismantled the statue of CR Swart (Pijoos 2016).

6 Lange (2015, 8) defines the (formal academic) curriculum as ‘a process of engagement with knowing, acting and being’. Future analysis may also fruitfully engage with the notion of a ‘cognitive praxis’ of social movements, the offline curriculum of teach-ins, seminars and debates, as well as the richness in their representation and cultural artefacts produced on and offline (cf. Badat 1999, 30–31).