Collectively oppressed and unequal: University students' perceptions of quality of life

Abstract

In 2015, a clarion call for radical social transformation sounded at South African universities. Rooted in a narrative of an urgent need to decolonise universities through radical and revolutionary change, students highlighted a sense that the status quo within South African universities perpetuates racialised patterns of exclusion and inequality. For them, this repression undermines the social and economic inclusion of black students in contemporary South Africa society. the argue that life for them had not necessary improved under democratic and dominant rule by the African National Congress (ANC). Their narrative emphasised the exclusionary structure of universities, symbolised in colonial statutes like that of Cecil Jon Rhodes. (#RhodesMustFall) and driven ideologically by "apartheid culture" (OpenStellenbosch) that does not advance an African philosophical and intellectual project, rendering African identity and lived experiences of oppression and continued economic and social marginalisation to the periphery of society.