Opening Panel: What does a decolonised, public higher education system look like?
Mariana Mora is Associate Professor – Researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico City. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from Stanford University in the United States. Her research focuses on struggles against violence and the continued processes of colonization as part of State formation in Latin America and her scholarship is situated within critical race theories, gender studies, decoloniality and the political. She is author of the award-winning book, Kuxlejal Politics: Indigenous Autonomy, Race and Decolonial Research in Zapatista Communities (2017) as well as numerous publications on the everyday struggles of autonomy and reterritorialization in Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico. Her recent scholarship centers on struggles for justice against racialized forms of violence and territorial dispossession in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. For the past decade Dr. Mora has accompanied the family members of the 43 teacher college students from the school, Ayotzinapa, – victims of forced disappearance in 2014 – in their struggles for truth and justice and against the de facto criminalization of Indigenous and peasant rural students. She is part of the continental Anti-Racist Action Research Network (Red Investigación Acción Anti- Racista, RAIAR), the Collective to Eliminate Racism in Mexico (Copera) and the Decolonial Feminist Network in Mexico.
Moshibudi Motimele is a lecturer in the Political Studies and Governance Department at the University of the Free State.
Tasneem Essop is a researcher at SWOP, where she has been based since 2017. She works on the Popular Politics programme where she has conducted research on community protests as well as electoral politics. Her broader interests include political organisations, social movements and popular politics. Tasneem is a PhD candidate, her project is titled Popular Politics and the Congress Tradition: Political Practice, Claim-making and Modes of Identification in Popular Political Formations in South Africa.
Ahmed Veriava is researcher and writer who lives in Johannesburg. He is also currently employed as a Senior Researcher in the Department of Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. His present research interests are focused in Political Theory and The Politics of Infrastructure.
Film Screening
A Fidai Film (2024)
Full abstract list
Re-membering the Margins: The Trans Collective’s Art Activism
Carbon
This presentation examines how The Trans Collective (TC)—a trans-led activist group born from the fissures of the 2015 Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) movement at the University of Cape Town—used art to critique systemic erasure within South Africa’s celebrated student uprisings. As we mark the 10th anniversary of Fees Must Fall (FMF) and RMF, this work interrogates how movements often exclude marginalized voices, even as they champion decolonial and intersectional rhetoric.
TC’s interventions (2015–2017)—including nude performances, spatial reclamations, and fi lm—served as acts of re-membering, inserting trans narratives into the contested archives of post-apartheid student struggles. For instance, the Trans Capture of RMF’s 2016 exhibition critiqued the movement’s performative solidarity, laying bare the gap between radical theory and praxis.
Drawing on archival visual analysis, participant observation, and interviews, this presentation argues that TC’s art-activism offers a blueprint for re-membering movements through an intersectional lens. Their work bridges the silences between student protests, and queer resistance, demonstrating how creative praxis can disrupt dominant narratives and reclaim space for marginalized actors. By centering trans embodiment and institutional critique, TC’s interventions challenge the myth of “post-apartheid freedom” and demand accountability from movements that claim inclusivity yet replicate exclusion.
The Return of the Militant Intellectual: Study, Revolutionary Affect, and the Will to Resist
Sophie Chamas
Walking the streets of Beirut, Lebanon, one is likely to encounter the stencilled face of the Lebanese Arab Marxist Hassan Hamdan, better known by his pen name of Mahdi Amel, who was an active member of the Lebanese Communist Party between the 1960s and 80s. This image is often accompanied by the graffitied exhortation to ‘Read Mahdi Amel’. Similarly, it is not uncommon in both Lebanon and Palestine to come across the image of revolutionary Palestinian novelist, journalist, and political thinker Ghassan Kanafani, sprayed or painted onto wall after wall alongside his famed expression: ‘bodies fall, but ideas endure.’ Kanafani, who was a central figure within the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was assassinated by Israel in 1972. Mahdi Amel was assassinated by a nascent Hezbollah in 1987. Both lived through, agitated against, and theorised about a conjuncture ostensibly distant and distinct from our own. Why, then, do the walls of Lebanon and Palestine continue to demand that we read Mahdi Amel, and that we recognise the endurance of Kanafani’s ideas? What is there to be gained from returning to or, picking up for the first time, the work of these militant intellectuals?
This paper draws from a wider project on the means through which Arab leftists cultivate the will and ability to persist and resist in the present, focusing on what I call ‘revolutionary debt’ and the role that it can play in nourishing commitments to the future-impossible. I’m interested in examining whether the cultivation of a relationship of indebtedness to and responsibility towards political ancestors can orient radical and revolutionary political actors in the present towards labouring for alternative horizons. This presentation will focus more specifically on the engagement with militant intellectuals from the past of the Arab world, looking at Mahdi Amel and Ghassan Kanafani in particular.
I do not engage in a detailed breakdown of the work of these thinkers, as I’m more interested in how and why others are engaging with this work and the political potentiality of the return to their writing in the contemporary moment, rather than my own analysis of their analyses. I will focus then on the possible effects of not only revisiting their work for its analytical resonances, but encountering their militant ethos.
Re-membering the Rural Offensive: Youth and Student Movements in 1980s Lebowa
Sarah Bruchhausen
My proposed verbal presentation draws from a journal article currently in preparation, which reconstructs the radical political subjectivities, practices, and organisational formations of youth and student movements in the former Lebowa bantustan during the 1980s; a period of rural insurgency often omitted from national liberation historiography and contemporary reflections on student activism. Based on oral histories and archival research, in conversation with existing historical literature, the paper explores how Black Consciousness-inspired student activists at the University of the North (Turfloop) forged enduring alliances with high school students, rural youth, and politically engaged elders to confront the bantustan regime and challenge local structures of authority.
Focusing on the 1985–1986 Lebowa uprising, the presentation examines how these movements mobilised around issues of land, education, and governance—drawing on longer traditions of anti-betterment resistance and women’s grassroots organising. It argues that the youth congresses that emerged during this period constituted a plural, archipelagic terrain of emancipatory politics, shaped by overlapping ideological currents and grounded in everyday struggles. My proposed paper/presentation speaks to the colloquium’s themes of longer histories of movements and struggle, student and youth politics on the continent and beyond, rural resistance and community struggles, archiving movements, and forms of political and collective subjectivity. Re-membering these histories on the tenth anniversary of the Fees Must Fall and End Outsourcing mobilisations invites renewed attention to rural geographies of dissent and to student movements that redefined political life beyond elite and urban spaces.
(Re)-voicing freedom: refusal, anger, and fantasies of violence
Thatshisiwe Ndlovu
Freedom in South Africa is broadly defined through the politics of racial reconciliation. The article offers insights into the understanding of freedoms and unfreedoms for previously silenced and marginalised apartheid subjects. Bridging feminist research and narrative theory, the paper explores retrospective intergenerational narratives of apartheid lived experiences, unpacking how older generation women articulate freedom in post-apartheid South Africa. Reading these narratives through the lens of refusal, the paper highlights that although political freedom and civil liberties were attained with democracy in 1994, freedom in the everyday takes a more personal and affective form. We illustrate how refusing the silencing of the ‘rainbow nation’ through the articulation of anger and fantasies of retributive violence are powerful expressions of freedom, resistance and the deep human need for recognition and justice. From this perspective, therefore, the experiential life stories of these post-apartheid Black women are attempts at (re)membering and (re)voicing freedom on their own terms.
Threading Jurisprudence re: the Right to Protest Post-Fees Must Fall
Khulisumuzi Kenneth Sithebe
The South African socio-political landscape, both during and after apartheid, underscores the critical significance of the right to protest as a vehicle for political expression, social mobilisation, and the pursuit of social justice.1 The apartheid regime used anti-protest laws to violate human rights; supress labour and labour unions and to clamp down on political dissent.2 In this context, the right to protest became emblematic of broader struggles against authoritarianism and racial oppression.
With the advent of constitutional democracy in 1994, South Africa adopted a progressive Bill of Rights that expressly protects the right to assemble, demonstrate, picket, and present petitions. Section 17 of the Constitution enshrines this right, recognising peaceful protest as a cornerstone of participatory democracy. That said, it is important to take stock of the development of jurisprudence regarding the right to protest – to evaluating whether the courts have expanded or restricted this right, identifying key moments of progress or regression, and interrogating the extent to which constitutional protections have translated into meaningful practice for protestors on the ground. Central to tracking such developments (jurisprudentially) are two issues – Fees Must Fall3 and Mlungwana and Others v S and Another.4
This paper will postulate that Fees Must Fall represented a significant reawakening of protest culture in democratic South Africa. While previous waves of protest often centred on labour disputes or service delivery failures, Fees Must Fall introduced a new paradigm, rooted in the pursuit of social justice, decolonisation, and the right to education. This paper will submit that Fees Must Fall illustrated that protest in a constitutional democracy is not merely a right to be passively protected but an active
Similarly, this was complemented, in a way the longer paper will justify, by the Mlungwana judgement, which held that the criminalisation of convening gatherings without notice is unconstitutional – regardless of whether the subsequent gathering is violent. The Court emphasised that criminalisation, even where gatherings are peaceful, has a chilling effect on the exercise of the right to protest, particularly for marginalised groups who may lack the resources or institutional support to navigate bureaucratic requirements.
This paper will hypothesise that Fees Must Fall and Mlungwana reflect a critical moment in the development of South Africa’s protest/movement jurisprudence.
African challenges necessitate indigenous solutions; consequently, progress in resolving these issues has been slow.
Asisipho Solani
The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 marked the initial step toward dividing Africa. Following this event, Europeans began colonizing the continent. Colonialism was primarily an economic effort to boost the colonizers’ economies. This paper investigates the legacy of colonialism in South Africa and Zimbabwe, focusing on how it has shaped the relationship between liberation movements and these countries. The specific aim is to analyze the factors behind the leadership and governance challenges faced by African liberation movements since independence. Additionally, the paper will examine the rise of various movements in post-independence Africa, their strategies, and their impacts. It will assess whether these movements effectively hold ruling parties accountable and explore the role of coalition governance during the post-independence period effects.
The study will employ a qualitative approach utilizing desktop research. It will primarily rely on secondary sources such as books, journal articles, and documents discussing liberation movements. Most of these sources are accessible online. Data will be analyzed thematically. To provide context, the theoretical frameworks of historical institutionalism and competitive authoritarianism will be used as foundational theories. These frameworks will offer insights into the challenges faced by African liberation movements in transitioning from liberation groups to governing political parties. Finally, strategic recommendations will be proposed in response to the fundamental challenges in Africa, including issues of poverty, unemployment, conflict, and warfare. It is imperative to work towards silencing guns and advancing the African Renaissance agenda.
A Tale of Two Movements
Lindokuhle Patiwe
Both scholarly work and public discourse have treated the student protest movements of 2015 as one continuous whole. While it is sometimes acknowledged that there was the Rhodes Must Fall movement in the beginning of that year and later in the year, the Fees Must Fall movement, reflections on the two movements share the assumption that both movements share fundamental philosophical and political assumptions about the post 1994 political situation. As such, reflections on the student protests of 2015 seem to focus more on how the student protests affected the South African political scene and little to no work has been done in looking at the key differences that separate the two movements. This paper seeks to argue that it is a flaw to see the two movements of 2015 as one continuous whole. It is argued that Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall were two qualitatively different movements that had fundamentally different political foundations and assumptions about the post 1994 South Africa. The paper argues that the while the Rhodes Must Fall movement was fundamentally opposed to the South African Constitution, the foundational document that founds the South African polity, the Fees Must Fall movement complemented it. In the paper, the Rhodes Must Fall movement is read as an Event, and while the Fees Must Fall movement, as an important historical South African post 1994 movement, is seen as just another iteration of the service delivery protests that have engulfed the country since the dawn of the post 1994 dispensation.
A history of the female members of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) in Sebokeng, c.1980- mid 1980s.
Itumeleng Mokoena
The Congress of South African Students (COSAS) was founded nationally in 1979 and quickly established branches across South African townships, with the aim of opposing the Bantu Education Act, which adversely affected Black students, and apartheid in general. In 1980 a branch of COSAS was established in Sebokeng Township, in the Vaal Triangle. While there is existing literature on COSAS, scholarly attention on its activities in the Vaal Triangle, particularly Sebokeng is limited. Furthermore, the available literature on COSAS in Sebokeng regrettably tends to foreground the experiences and contributions of male members, with minimal to no coverage of the involvement of the organisation’s female members during the 1980s. In light of this historiographical gap, I utilized oral history methodology to research and document the experiences, socio-political challenges and activities of the former female members of COSAS in Sebokeng, by conducting interviews with them. This enabled me to construct a comprehensive understanding of their involvement in COSAS’ activities and campaigns in Sebokeng. This study asserts that, despite the numerous socio-political or gender-specific challenges encountered by female members of COSAS in Sebokeng, they also played an active and significant role in the organization’s political campaigns throughout the 1980s. Their participation persisted until the eventual banning of COSAS in 1985, highlighting both their agency within the broader student movement and the critical, though often overlooked, contributions of young women in the anti-apartheid struggle.
Commemorating a revolution?
Frida Robles Ponce, Kunika Kharat, Thomas Crowley, and Ujjwal Kanishka Utkarsh
Can one truly commemorate a revolution, and what would that mean? Does commemoration suggest closure, fixing a movement in the past, or can it instead open space for ongoing struggle without nostalgia or resignation? These are some of the questions that guide our collaborative artistic research project Commemorating a Revolution Yet to Come. We—Frida Robles, Kunika Kharat, Thomas Crowley and Ujjwal Kanishka Utkarsh—engage with the Dalit anti-caste movement in India through the small town of Mahad. This town in Maharashtra is where, in 1927, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar led his first satyagraha and, together with thousands of Dalits, drank water from a tank which was socially forbidden to them.
With this presentation, we want to humbly reflect on Mahad’s place within the temporalities, discourses and future projections of the anti-caste struggle. What does it mean to be in Mahad a hundred years later? Can we, borrowing Tina Campt’s notion, be with this ghostly memory? What traces of the movement still resonate in a town now situated beside a chemical industry corridor? Can we think about the movement by looking at the water in the Chavdar Tale, by observing the adjacent Buddhist caves fearlessly close to the highway? What structures of commemoration guide our reflections, and are all commemorations inevitably bound up with institutional forms of remembering? Can we tap into critical fabulations to re-memorize what has yet to be written? Rather than offering any definitive narrative, the project asks whether acts of memorialisation can help to re-member a movement or whether they risk fixing narratives in ways that disconnect them from urgent political questions.
Our contribution will take the form of a lecture performance, combining personal narratives, reflections, speculative fictional writings around the 1927 rally, combined with fragments of video footage from our engagements in and with Mahad. We also wish to share the mistakes, shortfalls, questions and hopes that accompany this process. Through long-durational observational film and curatorial practices, we seek to stay with Mahad’s complexities—its achievements, contradictions and resonances—and to ask whether slow, attentive practices of looking and listening can nurture the unfinished and potential search for an anti-caste society.
FMF 2016: WhatsApp as an historical archive?
Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon
This presentation will reflect on personal experiences as part of a group of academics and students that gathered to observe the unfolding of student protests at Wits in 2016, and particularly to monitor police violence. The group published several articles in independent and national media. The WhatsApp chat records, and accompanying photos, provide an extremely detailed minute-by-minute account of the unfolding of the protests and police responses. The presentation will reflect on the potential uses of the WhatsApp group as an historical archive, particularly given the issues of naming in a group that was not ostensibly public. It will also reflect on questions of historical validity and on some of the ethical issues raised by the monitoring process.
The TRC, Eurochronopolitics, and the Struggle to Archive Colonial Violence
Keolebogile Mbebe
This paper critiques the temporal framing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report, arguing that its reliance on Eurocentric linear time produces a narrative of closure that obscures enduring colonial injustices. By privileging 1960–1994 as the key historical crisis, the TRC repositions earlier histories of conquest, slavery, and dispossession as a “distant past,” thereby narrowing responsibility and curtailing redress. This periodisation constructs a reconciliatory arc that enables settler descendants to evade accountability while reinforcing Western legal and historiographical norms. Drawing on chronosophy and chronopolitics, the paper shows how time itself becomes political, situating some communities as “modern” and others as permanently “behind.” Against this Eurochronopolitical logic, the paper gestures toward alternative temporal practices found in archiving and memory movements, which resist erasure by keeping alive histories of dispossession as present and unfinished. Such practices challenge reconciliation-as-closure and open possibilities for justice that confront the long durée of colonialism.
Re-membering the Grenada Revolution and thinking with the archipelago from Solomon House
Lindiwe Malindi
This paper views the occupations that characterised 2015-2016 as experiments in decolonial space-making. Using the concepts of ‘island politics’ and ‘archipelagic thinking’ it reads these as metaphorical island spaces. It uses the Grenada Revolution of 1979-1983 to consider the spatial dynamics that inform the possibilities and well as limitations and vulnerabilities presented by the tactic of occupation.
More to follow