South Africa’s Fees Must Fall: The Case of #UPrising in 2015

Abstract

Writing from a participant observation point of view with supplement of in-depth interviews, this article presents UPrising, a student-led movement that emerged at the University of Pretoria's Hatfield campus during the 2015 Fees Must Fall tuition fees protest. We examine its activities within UP's politically contested student space, in terms of recruitment, mobilisation and organisation of students. The article also traces how UPrising led protests on campus-specific issues and proposed tuition fees increase that had been proposed in 2014 for the 2016 academic year in conversation with broader student protests of 2015. We argue that UPrising led a successful student struggle through a nonpartisan approach, effective use of social media and strategic leadership in a space with intense surveillance and fraught with partisan student politics that intersected with gender.

Entrenching Privilege: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Afriforum Jeug During the #Mustfall Protests at the University of Pretoria: A Case Study

“…The general themes of violence, populism, colonialism, coloniality, race, racism, dehumanisation and political opportunism are matters well-traversed in in-numerous opinion pieces and studies such as Free Fall: Why South African Universities are in a Race against Time (Ray 2016), #RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa (Nyamnjoh 2016) and Fees Must Fall: Student Revolt, Decolonisation and Governance in South Africa (Booysen 2017) and will not be elaborated on here. Furthermore, Mashayamombe's (2019 and articles on the protest movement at the UP have offered significant insights into the dynamics of the activists, their leadership, the intersectionality of issues and the nature of the student movement at UP. Nomvete and Mashayamombe's analysis which uses a 'contentious politics' framework (2019) underpins key arguments in this paper which argues that the activist movement at UP had support across the board as students were united in their outrage at the exorbitant costs of accessing higher education.…”