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ABSTRACT
The largest student revolt since Soweto 1976, the student movements of 2015, were historic, challenging the lack of serious reform in the university systems and bringing to the fore the question of decolonization. Named ‘the Fanonian moment,’ it was the latest expression of the disillusion of rainbow politics. Marked by the Marikana massacre and the death of Nelson Mandela, Fanon’s name is almost as popular as Steve Biko’s and his name is often referenced in newspaper articles. While Fanon’s critique of post-apartheid has been well rehearsed in South Africa, this paper considers ‘the Fanonian Moment’ and the current popularity of Fanon as well as Steve Biko’s idea of Black consciousness as critical elements of decolonial liberation. With a focus on the student movements, the paper suggests that Fanon’s thought, and his notion of the rationality of revolt, is especially alive in intentional spaces where decolonization and liberation are linked with everyday questions of movement democracy and organization.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the organizers of the conference 'Retour sur Frantz Fanon' in Rabat, Morocco where I presented Being and having: The spectre of Fanon and the rationality of revolt' and the staff at the Steve Biko Centre in King Williams Town, South Africa, especially Mwalele Cele, for hosting my lecture 'The spectre of Fanon and the rationality of revolt on the 40th anniversary of Soweto.' I would also like to thank the participants for their engaging questions and, in addition, I would especially like to thank students at the university currently known at Rhodes particularly Jonis Ghedi Alasow, Mikaela Erskog, Fezokuhle Mthonti, and Paddy O’Halloran for their thoughtful engagements and insights.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
* Versions of this paper were presented at ‘Retour Sur Frantz Fanon,’ School of Government and Economics, Rabat, Morocco, 26 May 2016 and at the Steve Biko Centre, King William's Town, South Africa, 6 July 2016. While some analyses of the student movement by the participants have been written and others are still to be written, I hope this intervention can be considered a small contribution to the debates.
1 Gordon (Citation2015), Lee (Citation2015), Zelig’s compiled (Citation2015).
2 These numbers mask local specificities and specific political manipulations. According to the 2016 Community Survey, 13% of the nation’s 16.9 million households live in informal settlements which is just 0.6% lower than that recorded in the 2011 census.
3 Especially since the UKZN Provincial government's ‘slums act’ was defeated by Abahlali baseMjondolo in the constiutional court in 2009.
4 Indeed, the community and its supporters have (of July 2016) forced the mining company to pull out of Xolobeni.
5 Forty one striking mineworkers were killed by police during the strike.
6 On Ramaphosa and Marikana see Marinovich (Citation2016).
7 When I think of Fanon's critique of the project of creating a bourgeoisie as already senile, I am always reminded of Kwei Armah's Abiola the Frog in the Beautyful Ones are not yet born who ages rapidly as a child.
8 Some reports note South Africa's Black middle class growing from 350,000 individuals in 1993 to almost 3 million individuals in 2012, others see a doubling from 1.7-million South Africans in 2004 to 4.2-million in 2012. See http://businesstech.co.za/news/wealth/94987/how-big-is-south-africas-black-middle-class.
9 For a nuanced sociologial analysis of the Black middle class, see Southall (Citation2016).
10 There was a prehistory of the movement. For example, at the University of Witwatersrand, in the last months of 2014, a group of politics students released a document titled, ‘Transformation Memorandum 2014’, which focused on the lack of transformation within their department and at the university as a whole. ‘Calling WITS a microcosm of South Africa,’ writes Camalita Naicker,
they said they were alarmed by the slow progress of transformation in reference to the composition of academic staff, particularly the lack of black academic staff members especially women. The South African academy remains dominated by white academic staff; currently only 14% of professors are black, while the University of Cape Town does not have a single black female professor. The WITS students also targeted the untransformed curriculum that did not reflect their lived experiences as black students, or that the university was part of the African Continent. (See Naicker, Citation2015b)
11 Naicker (Citation2015b) notes that ‘Hashtags … have become so dangerous in South Africa, that in possibly another first in South African legal history the management of UCT were successful in attaining a court interdict citing #feesmustfall as a second respondent, effectively suing a hashtag!’
12 Though the details of the stories within the movements remain to be told by the participants, it is also important to note that this moment of national unity also marked the end of the movement as a moment of mass participation. For a number of reasons including such questions as organization and democracy, intersectionality, autonomy and participation, factionalism and exhaustion also took its toll at a number of universities including RMF at UCT and the BSM at the university currently known as Rhodes.
13 See, for example, Manzini (Citation2016) contribution to the popular Mail & Guardian ‘thoughtleaders’ Mandela-Rhodes scholars’ blog.
14 The PAC was created after a break with the ANC in 1959 over the latter's perceived move away from an Africanist perspective and the involvements of whites and ‘Indians’ in the creation of the Freedom charter. Banned in 1960 after the Sharpeville massacre, the PAC remained important internationally, but always in the shadow of the ANC. Interestingly, the PAC was brought back to life in some of the rhetoric and politics around decolonization at the University of Cape Town. Calling on students to join a protest outside the Bremner building, the RMF statement on April 14th 2015, ended with the (PAC) Azanian People’s Liberation Army slogan, ‘one bullet, one settler.’
15 One high point of the solidarity occurred toward the end of the student occupation of the council chamber with a march of students and workers. Workers and students spoke, forcing the Vice Chancellor, the registrar and the financial director to respond.
16 The organization developed task teams to work on different issues which would report back to the general meetings where collective decisions were made. Conscious of the power of personalities, the meetings had revolving chairs.
17 For Abahlali, living learning includes discussions with intellectuals outside of the shack settlements, and reflections in the settlements on the actions of the state and what they called the ‘regressive left’ – who wanted to use them but not listen to them and who attacked them for not being subservient. Living learning is a product of wide-ranging and ongoing discussions and meetings, always mediated by their own democratic and inclusive principles.