Student activists are losing faith in the legacies of anti-apartheid heroes like Nelson Mandela. Perhaps all South Africans should do the same. It may just be what the country needs for its future.
South Africa’s universities have been told to set their own fee increases for 2017. That’s good news for institutions, but it hasn’t been well-received by many students.
Podcasts are emerging as an arguably easy-to-access, affordable mode of creating new spaces for discussion and debate.
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The podcast has emerged as a promising medium for facilitating ongoing debate about issues that need more time than mainstream, profit-oriented media or the changing tides of hashtags might allow.
The decolonisation of South Africa’s university curriculum seems to have fallen off the agenda, overtaken by the push for free higher education.
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When celebrating Nelson Mandela Day, it would benefit South Africans to reflect on what the statesman’s legacy means for the nation and how they are living up to his dreams for the country.
There is a growing authoritarian impulse in South Africa, including among some student activists.
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Sections of South Africa’s student movements regard transformation as a complete failure. Responding to this perceived failure, some have adopted an anti-democratic stance.
South Africa needs to build a mental infrastructure that will allow people to individually and collectively engage in a bold, courageous and trutfhul dialogue.
Women students have been at the forefront of South African university protests.
EPA/Nic Bothma
Forty years after the students uprisings of 1976, South Africa is again in the midst of a political movement led by students.They have changed the tenor and shape of political discussion around education.
Students cheer as a statue of Cecil John Rhodes is removed from the University of Cape Town in April 2015.
REUTERS/Sumaya Hisham
There is a risk that because of fatigue, frustration and silencing the important moment created by South Africa’s student movements will pass by with no proper, long-term structural change.
Transforming the curriculum isn’t as simple as replacing some books with others.
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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.
The US and Cuban flags with Havana’s National Capitol Building in the background.
EPA/Michael Reynolds
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.
Protests are continuing at Oxford over a statue of Cecil Rhodes.
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If it’s ok to use research carried out in unethical experiments – as long as we acknowledge they were wrong – is it ok to keep a statue of an infamous imperialist?
South Africa is losing patience with the ANC.
Reuters/Mark Wessells
The book contains major flaws, the chief of which is the lack of solid, supporting evidence. Brown claims that ‘Rhodes documented everything’ – which was not actually the case in this regard.
The world according to the British empire.
Imperial Federation, Map of the World 1886; Wikimedia