#FeesMustFall Protests in South Africa: A Critical Realist Analysis of Selected Newspaper Articles

Abstract

Using Critical Realism, this article looks at articles from selected South African newspapers which reported on the #FeesMustFall protests. The study established that, arising from the protests, was a culture characteried by tensions and distrust amongst stakeholders such as students, university management and the government. This, the article argues, was a result of how each of these stakeholders perceived, and went on to exercise, their agency in an attempt to resolve the conflict arising from the protests. To avert a recurrence of negative consequences of student protests such as the destruction of property and development of toxic and adversarial relationships amongst different stakeholders, the article recommends collaborative approaches to conflict resolution in South African higher education. These approaches need to be framed differently from those in which some stakeholders seek to use their agency to achieve outright victory over other stakeholders -a recurring mode of engagement during the #FeesMustFall protests.

COVID-19 onset reduced the sex ratio at birth in South Africa

“…Second, similar protests/riots to the aforementioned ones have occurred before in South Africa during the most recent 100-month period, in April 2015 [19], but with no significant SRB decline either 3-5 or 9 months later (post-hoc analysis). Third, contrary to COVID-19, which had broader nationwide ramifications, these protests [6, 19, 27] were confined to certain locations with possibly more localised effects.…”

Pandemic Leadership in Higher Education: New Horizons, Risks and Complexities

“…What emerges in the work of Jansen (2017), Habib (2019), Lawton-Misra (2019) and others (Badat 2016;CSVR 2017;Mavunga 2019) is that university leaders largely resorted to a crisis management approach in 2015 during #FeesMustFall, when the student movement was still emergent and relatively unpredictable in its course of action. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 context, key concerns were to ensure that the academic year could be salvaged, and exams could be written in 2020.…”

The Impact of COVID-19 on Transformation in a Speech-Language Pathology University Program in South Africa

“…Building on from the #Rhodesmustfall protest earlier in 2015, the #feesmustfall protest spiraled to a national level whereby disgruntled students engaged in battle with management structures of the different universities initially and then with government, as the pace and momentum of the protests increased nationally. Thus, what started out as a fee increase dispute aggregated into discontent with the insincerity and ad hoc attention given to transformation in higher education since the fall of apartheid in 1994 (Mavunga, 2019). Feelings of discomfort and not belonging were at the heart of the protest and were perpetuated by continued disempowerment of Black voices in higher education, lack of transparency, poor racial diversity, gender imbalances, historical landmarks, and names of buildings.…”

“…Feelings of discomfort and not belonging were at the heart of the protest and were perpetuated by continued disempowerment of Black voices in higher education, lack of transparency, poor racial diversity, gender imbalances, historical landmarks, and names of buildings. Taking on names such as #Outsourcingmustfall, #Shackville, #EndRapeCulture, and #PatriachyMustFall (Mavunga, 2019;Ndelu et al, 2016), students also expressed dissatisfaction with teaching content and assessment methods, and these were all brought to the fore as part of the #feesmustfall movement of 2015-2016. The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, subsequently adopted an accelerated transformation program (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2015).…”