“Asiphelelanga!” (we are not complete!): #FeesMustFall movement and higher education in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

This article focuses on the Fees Must Fall Protests in South Africa as a decolonial strategy implemented by university students who seek a fully liberated South Africa. Students’ core demands of the access to and quality of university education embody Africans’ early ideals of freedom from the Victorian Era to the turbulence seen in the violent student protests of the 1970s and 1980s. Students underscored that their future is compromised by the ruling party’s inability to live up to a democratic blueprint of liberation. By marching and inflicting disruptive modes of politics, including vandalizing property, university students called for the removal of colonial artifacts. Through innovative uses of social media networks and viral hashtags, students documented their effort to decolonize their universities through a form of knowledge production infused with African epistemologies.