Understanding Divergent Outcomes in Open Development

Abstract

During October and November 2015, mass student uprisings shook South Africa as university students across the country coordinated protests to shut down all South African campuses. The #FeesMustFall movement challenged exorbitant fee increases and outsourced labor practices in an increasingly commodified higher education system. The movement’s demands emphasized free, quality, and decolonized education (Naidoo 2016). Students employed a wide range of protest tactics, such as occupying university buildings, closing access routes, shutting down classes, protest songs and marches, and extensive use of social media. Their hashtags, such as #NationalShutdown, #FeesMustFall, and #endoutsourcing (linking the students’ demands to the conditions of service staff at universities), generated extensive social media activity, including South Africa’s first Tweetstorm. Many compared these actions to the student protests of June 1976, since the specific demand #FeesMustFall took place in the context of a broader political challenge, namely anger at the slow pace of change two decades after the advent of democracy in the country. At the same time, a resurgence of black consciousness and feminism challenged the continued dominance of white, male, middleclass norms at the university and seen in society as a whole. Blackled student movements used intersectional feminisms to challenge patriarchal and gendered practices both outside and inside the movements, which continued through 2016, culminating in another spate of protests and shutdowns in October and November of that year. At many universities, including the University of Cape Town (UCT), facetoface lectures were intermittently suspended in response to the 8 Understanding Divergent Outcomes in Open Development