A violent attack on a female student at one of South Africa’s prominent universities was not an isolated incident. It told a universal tale of how patriarchy still rules.
If South Africans are to make the radical changes they must to become truly great, the new generation will have to find a way of understanding the country’s past in its profound complexity.
Cuba’s National Capitol Building has been reclaimed as the seat of the National Assembly 54 years after it was abandoned by the new revolutionary government. There are lessons in this for others.
In future, universities will only survive if they can produce knowledge fast and innovate. This will require transformational leadership that gets everyone involved.
If higher education is made “free” for all, the whole society ends up paying more. That’s deeply unjust in already unequal societies, such as those in Africa.
It is unlikely President Zuma will announce a structural changes in his State of the Nation Address. This, despite education being in dire need of fundamental restructuring and an economy in decline.
Many people dismiss the idea of free, quality public university education out of hand. But there are many ways to make it happen - and it all ties back to the idea of education as a public good.
With the local government elections set to take place within the next seven months, it is worth considering what impact the recent upsurge in protests will have on the country’s political future.
The way in which one group of South African student protesters has acted and engaged with university managers shows how valuable a feminist approach to protest can be.
South Africa’s fee exemption system is at the heart of a deepening divide in the country’s school sector. It’s time for a major relook at how this policy is applied.
The #FeesMustFall and #ZumaMustFall campaigns come from the same place. The rage has its roots in opposition to Zuma’s surrender of national sovereignty through globalising South African capitalism.
University protests in South Africa have showed that the countries students are hungry for real change. This desire can be harnessed to create a generation of “citizen scholars”.
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?
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