Rising Powers, People Rising: Neoliberalization and Its Discontents in the Brics Countries by Alf Gunvald Nilsen & Karl von Holdt

Author:Alf Gunvald Nilsen & Karl von Holdt [Nilsen, Alf Gunvald & Holdt, Karl von]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, Economic History, History, Revolutionary, Political Science, General, Technology & Engineering, Construction, Heating; Ventilation & Air Conditioning
ISBN: 9781000376005
Google: FqsXEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 55826208
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-04-25T13:32:00+00:00

4. From hashtags to movements?

The newest additions to the movement landscape are student collectives that have grown from mobilizations popularized through hashtags – #TransformWits, #RhodesMustFall, #OutsourcingMustFall, #FeesMustFall – which have been analysed in vivid accounts by student activists themselves (Chinguno et al., 2017; Langa, 2017). Led by a new generation of mainly students and younger workers, these protests have been significant for how they have mobilized old repertoires from across the political spectrum in a very new context and through very new forms of media. They have made institutions of higher learning ‘sites of struggle’5 once again, and returned society to battles lost in the early 2000s, including struggles against outsourcing and for free education,6 as universities started to reorganize along neoliberal lines. Social media facilitated the mobilization of students who would not ordinarily have joined a protest led by the Student Representative Council, and the simplicity of the slogan ‘Fees Must Fall’ appealed to a majority of students across all kinds of differences, without any particular political or ideological framing (for student accounts, see Malabela, 2017; Mashibini, 2017; Ndlovu, 2017). At the same time, however, songs, slogans, and icons usually associated with one particular political tradition were appropriated by all and made common to the immediate struggle. For example, the name and history of Solomon Mahlangu, an ANC guerrilla who was executed by the apartheid regime, became so defining of those who gathered in struggle in Senate House at Wits that it was the name they chose to give to the building as part of the process of decolonizing the university (Mthombeni, 2017). And, although the protests may have been started by students involved in formal political organizations, the majority of those who joined and sustained the actions were first-timers to protest.

In these new mobilizations, the dominance of the Congress movement has been questioned as many students turned to Black Consciousness, Pan-Africanism, and Black thought more generally in their grappling with the problems identified with the ANC government. Students called for the ‘decolonization’ of higher education, in particular of the curriculum and institutional cultures. Students identifying as feminist and queer critiqued student organizations for reproducing masculinist, sexist, misogynistic, racist, homophobic, and other exclusionary and prejudicial forms of engagement and organization (Dlakavu, 2017; Jacobs, 2017).

What became the largest of these movements, taking on a national character, began on 13 October 2015, when students at Wits in Johannesburg embarked on protests against a proposed fee increase for 2016 behind the hashtag, #FeesMustFall. Led by elected student leaders who felt let down by the representative structures of governance and decision-making of the university, and joined by outsourced workers engaged in a struggle for inclusion, the protests swelled to unprecedented levels, both at Wits and nationally (Kgoroba, 2017; Mabasa, 2017).

Although the initial protest was led by the Wits Students Representative Council dominated by Congress-aligned formations, it soon overran its origins. In the mass open forums in Solomon House, different political and ideological traditions as well as lived experience and exposure to forms of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.