University students in South Africa tend to fall into a "single story" trap, ignoring other individuals’ experiences to construct an understanding of the country's political realities.
Research in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, shows that many young, black and poor people do not recognise themselves or their communities in the stories they see, hear or read in mainstream media.
More South Africans are taking to the streets to hold government accountable.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings
South Africans' faith in the post-apartheid system of democracy is clearly slipping - and some even suggest that a return to apartheid would be a good thing.
Most young South Africans can’t afford tuition fees and are left out of the higher education system.
Kim Ludbrook/EPA
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.
Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). He has openly questioned Nelson Mandela’s economic policy legacy.
Reuters/Skyler Reid
South African opposition politician Julius Malema has blamed economic policies put in place during Nelson Mandela's era for the country's high levels of inequality. He may have a point.
Young South Africans are angry with the failure of the country to deal with racism.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
The central thrust of Haffajee's book is compelling. It argues that black South Africans, especially the new generation of young, black ‘born frees' are obsessed with whiteness and white privilege.
Miners pray during the one-year anniversary commemoration of the killings of 34 striking miners by police outside Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
The reporting of the Marikana massacre was characterised by embedded journalism, sensationalism and polarisation of views. The media became a loudspeaker for powerful political and economic interests.
Former presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. Both men had clear ideas about South Africa’s foreign policy.
Reuters
Over the past two decades, it has not been easy for any country – let alone a newly freed one, like post-apartheid South Africa – to understand the rapidly changing world.
Producing brilliant graduates is one thing – developing and nurturing those who want to remain in academia is quite another.
Jason Reed/Reuters
Universities in South Africa have tried to "grow their own timber" in a bid to diversify staff bodies. These programs haven't been wildly successful. Why, and what can be done differently?
21 years into democracy, are South Africa’s university students showing other citizens how best to hold the state accountable?
EPA/Ihsaan Haffejee
University students in South Africa have shown the potential of mass mobilisation to influence policy in advancing justice for their constitutional democratic rights.
Supporters of the Economic Freedom Fighters protesting outside the Johannesburg stock exchange.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
Since the 1940s, it's been common for political moderates to move to the fore in South Africa – then, intermittently, to the background. They are replaced by radicals or exclusivist nationalists.
Nelson Mandela was a lawyer, an activist, a political prisoner and a president. He was also a man who loved learning.
Reuters
A lot has changed for the better in South Africa's education system - but inequality remains a thorn in the country's side. How can we disrupt educational inequality?
Supporters of the Congress of South African Trade Unions march in the streets of Johannesburg. Economic freedom has eluded the majority of South Africans.
Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters
Economic transformation of unequal societies in a democratising context is difficult. This requires a creative mix of policy options underpinned by a commitment to social justice.
Students protest at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University demanding the right to be taught in English rather than Afrikaans, which they identify with apartheid.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings
The university should be the bastion of the right to free expression in the promotion of democracy, and has a moral and ethical obligation to provide spaces for fierce debate and critical engagement.
A bust of Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid. Verwoerd believed that black people should know their place – and that included staying away from ‘white’ jobs.
Juda Ngwenya/Reuters
Vocational training is regarded as "low status" in South Africa. Much of the negativity around technical and vocational work seems to lie in the country's history.
A statue of colonialist Cecil John Rhodes is removed from the University of Cape Town after student protests. Could real transformation come through changing governance structures?
Nic Bothma/EPA
How can the higher education sector guard against proposed transformation measures being merely superficial quick fixes? At least part of the answer may lie in institutional governance.
Black students at University of Stellenbosch protest against the institutions’s language policy they say discriminates against them by favouring Afrikaans.
Times Media/Adrian de Kock
Black youth are grappling with the question of the meaning of freedom in post-apartheid South Africa. They seek an antidote to their reality wherein blackness continues to be mocked and marginalised.
A still from the 2015 film ‘Necktie Youth’. Film in South Africa needs to undergo radical change if it is to shed the shackles of the past.
Urucu Media/Hanro Havenga
Senior Research Specialist in Democracy, Governance and Service Delivery at the Human Science Research Council and a Research Fellow Centre for African Studies, University of the Free State
South African Research Chair in Teacher Education; Director of Centre for International Teacher Education (CITE) & Professor of International Education and Development Policy (University of Sussex, UK), Cape Peninsula University of Technology