and Training
DUT Durban University of Technology
EFF Economic Freedom Fighters
FMF #FeesMustFall
IFP Inkatha Freedom Party
LGBT lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
LGBTQI lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, and intersex
NDP National Development Plan
NEHAWU National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union
NGO non-governmental organisation
NMMU Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
NSC National Senior Certificate
NSFAS National Student Financial Aid Scheme
NUSAS National Union of South African Students
NWU North-West University
PAC Pan Africanist Congress
PASMA Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania
RMF #RhodesMustFall
SACP South African Communist Party
SADC Southern African Development Community
SADESMO South African Democratic Students Movement
SALDRU Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit
SASCO South African Students Congress
SASO South African Students Organisation
SRC Student Representative Council
SU Stellenbosch University
TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission
TUT Tshwane University of Technology
TVET Technical and Vocational Education and Training
UCT University of Cape Town
UFS University of the Free State
UJ University of Johannesburg
UKZN University of KwaZulu-Natal
UNISA University of South Africa
UP University of Pretoria
USAf Universities South Africa
UWC University of the Western Cape
WITS University of the Witwatersrand
WSU Walter Sisulu University
Introduction
The Perfect Storm
All waves, no matter how huge, start as rough spots –
cats’ paws – on the surface of the water.
– Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm, 1997
The student protests of 2015–2016 caught South Africans by surprise. In a relatively short period of time, the defilement of a campus statue in Cape Town and a complaint about student fee increases in Johannesburg melded into a powerful protest movement that affected almost every one of the 26 public universities in the country. Even during the long, dark days of apartheid, no university had ever experienced this level of student protest in terms of scale, scope, intensity, and, in the course of time, violence.
The African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s ruling party, was caught off guard, resting in an unmerited assurance that it enjoyed political dominance on most campuses through its student affiliates. The government was surprised, given its expanding pro-poor investments in student welfare, particularly through the national bursary aid scheme. Much of the broader community was shocked, in light of the widely accepted understanding of education as the key to personal and social mobility. The universities themselves were caught napping, unprepared for the sudden backlash for which they had neither the resources to meet student demands, the skill to negotiate the new politics, nor the security to protect campus lives and property.
One group was not surprised: the university leaders, variously called rectors (at the Afrikaans-origin universities) or principals (at the English-origin universities) but commonly designated vice-chancellors of their institutions. Over the course of the protests, one after another university leader would say something like, ‘We tried to warn the government for more than a decade that a perfect storm was brewing.’ The ‘perfect storm’ metaphor would be heard again and again above the din of the protests to refer to the twin dangers of the decline in government subsidies and the steady increase in student fees. At some point these two planes would cross each other in foul weather with costly and potentially catastrophic consequences. And they did so with a vengeance in March 2015 and especially in October 2016. Yet even these vice-chancellors could not predict the intensity of the student revolt on their campuses and around the country. A seasoned veteran of campus politics as a student activist, one vice-chancellor would say repeatedly: ‘I was profoundly shocked by what was happening.’ What in the world was going on?
This book attempts to answer three difficult questions about the crisis in South Africa universities in 2015–2016:
•What in fact happened? Neither claims of some incipient political revolution nor an easy dismissal of protests as social pathology answers this question. What at first seems to be the obvious answer – angry students were upset with universities and reacted through peaceful and sometimes violent protests – clearly does not capture the many different faces of the revolt expressed in different ways on diverse campuses with varied consequences. Conclusions made at first glance are often too simple and cannot be read off the headlines in a newspaper or in an instant missive by a 750-word-limit columnist. This unprecedented disruption of public universities needs a clearer and deeper narration organised around an informed understanding of exactly what was taking place.
•Why did it happen? As the protests broke out in earnest, there were thoughtful people who immediately opined that the desecration of the monument honouring Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town (UCT), and its eventual removal from a prominent position on Upper Campus, were not about the statue. Then what was it about? Here was a liberal university that had long ago opened its doors to black students under constant threat from the apartheid government. It had a proud tradition of anti-apartheid protest, freedom lectures, and critical centres for intellectual thought, as well as two black vice-chancellors in recent history. More than one scholar warned that the protests were not about student fee increases per se; rather, they expressed a much larger grievance against a grossly unequal society. Still, why would the liberal universities – including Nelson Mandela’s alma mater, the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) – become the special targets of such fervent and sustained protest? Or were the protests about these very universities in the first place?
•What does the protest crisis mean for the future of South African universities? The duration and intensity of the protests invariably raised questions about the long-term effects of the crisis on universities. In particular, the recognition of the unmanageability of the crisis in both financial and political terms cast doubt
