Rhodes was an ardent white supremacist who believed Africans to be inferior. He intended his scholarships to be for white males only. This has since fallen away.
The student protests that rocked South Africa’s universities in 2015 are part of a class struggle as poor and marginalised people fight for their place in an unequal system.
The year 2015 escalated many of the tensions that have existed on university and college campuses for a long time. It will be remembered as the year of student activism.
Those who don’t want Stellenbosch University to make English the main language of instruction have invoked South Africa’s Constitution - but the assumptions underlying their arguments are false.
Student protests in South Africa saw triumph for the hashtag and success for the slogan. What lies beyond this as students push for genuine change in universities?
Architects and those working on the built environment can learn valuable lessons about their discipline – how it’s taught, and how it’s carried out – from the 2015 student protests.
The students’ movement has stretched South Africans in personal, professional, powerful and provocative ways. Have academics been stretched enough to reflect deeply on the status quo at universities?
It’s time to change how student representatives are elected at South Africa’s universities. The existing process gives far too much space and power to political parties.
Universities were widely criticised for turning to the courts during a series of student protests in South Africa. So why did they do it, and did the interdict process work?
The #feesmustfall movement brought gains for democracy. As relatively free spaces for enquiry, universities have a public duty to fight, not facilitate, a slide into a national security state.
In 1988 students from the University of Zimbabwe began demonstrating against government corruption. Their protests grew into a national movement that indelibly changed the country.
University students in South Africa have shown the potential of mass mobilisation to influence policy in advancing justice for their constitutional democratic rights.
It has been an exciting month for Africa, not least for the highly controversial elections in Tanzania, where the annulment of the entire vote in Zanzibar has played an important role in extending the…
When funding imperatives dominate universities’ strategies, higher education loses sight of the work it ought to be doing: developing graduates who can make a real difference in the world.
Student protests in South Africa, as well as an unrelated clash between lawyers, have offered a chance for the country to hear voices that are usually marginalised.
Students have won an important victory. But to understand the complex nature of oppression and how to respond to it will require many struggles over a longer period of time.
Don’t let the name fool you: the #feesmustfall protests at South Africa’s universities are about far more than a single issue. A student who has been deeply involved in the protests explains.
Professor of Architecture and SARChI: DST/NRF/SACN Research Chair in Spatial Transformation (Positive Change in the Built Environment), Tshwane University of Technology
Chief Research Specialist in Democracy and Citizenship at the Human Science Research Council and a Research Fellow Centre for African Studies, University of the Free State
Chief Director: Tshwane University of Technology – Institute for Economic Research on Innovation; Node Head: DST/NRF SciSTIP CoE; and Professor Extraordinary: Stellenbosch University – Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology., Tshwane University of Technology