Towards an intellectual engagement with the #studentmovements in South Africa

Abstract

Every night over the previous week, black staff members were taking turns to conduct seminars with students [...]. The quality of the discussions was not anything I had seen at the University of Cape Town, Cornell, Harvard or any of the universities I had attended. [...] My biggest fear is that black people will not take the racist abuse any longer and we will find ourselves in the racial civil war we averted in 1994. I don't say this lightly. [...] Between us and that outcome stand the students of the University of Cape Town. They are the best antidote to racist psychosis. They are the miner's canary that is foretelling us of racial war. (Mangcu 2015, 2) Over the past few weeks, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of words have been written or spoken about the student protests and marches that led to President Zuma's clearly panicked response, declaring that there would be no fee increases at South African universities in 2016. [...] And then there is a further challenge, lurking in the shadows of the future. Demands, backed by protests (some violent), that are so rashly and ignorantly acceded to, produce the understandable notion that the next round of demands will also result in acquiescence. [...] Either or both consequences will result in the move from the decline to the fall of South Africa's universities. (Butler-Adam 2015, 1-2).