Somewhere Over the Rainbow: After Rhodes Fell

A decade after a bucket of excrement triggered the largest post-apartheid student movement, Fallism���s legacy gestures toward a future where the social utility of universities remains uncertain, but the frustrations of South Africa���s youth are poised to erupt. Illustration by Gaurab Thakali

At the beginning of every year, South Africa eagerly awaits the results of secondary school final exams (locally known as Matrics) from all over the country. It���s an occasion that receives wall-to-wall coverage typical of a national election. Around the start of testing in October, broadcasters descend on schools interviewing teachers, principals, and parents to give a status report on the exam readiness of learners. As papers are marked through the festive season, educational experts weigh in on the state of the national schooling system and estimate the pass rate. When results are finally published in January, the coverage becomes a full-blown spectacle. Viewers are inundated by live results, statistical analysis, humdrum interviews with government officials, and sentimental features celebrating top-performing students with backgrounds ranging from underserved public to well-resourced private schools. For most of the public, Matric exams are the test of a lifetime, a measure of hard work and preparation with the ultimate reward being a university-entrance pass.

In a country whose fractured past has made it difficult to forge a national identity with shared customs, the annual fanfare over Matric results has become one of South Africa���s few rituals. Yet, this spectacle also touches on a deeper belief: that education remains the last great equalizer in a society defined by racialized class disparity. Although the idea of education as a pathway to upward mobility still holds in many parts of the world, particularly in the Global South, after the fall of apartheid in 1994, it became deeply enmeshed with the democratic promises of the ANC government. Enshrined as a fundamental right in the constitution, access to education���in this case tertiary education���was meant to be the cornerstone of the post-apartheid dream. However, much like the illusion of a ���miracle democracy��� held together by a mighty Rainbow Nation, it buckled under the pressure to reform a racially divided, unequal country in the age of neoliberal globalization.

Since the advent of democracy, Matric students have been trained to believe that earning a university degree will give them an advantage in an increasingly cutthroat economy. But, what is the value of that promise when it is consistently undermined by rising tuition fees, historical debt, a defective student aid system, and the very real threat of financial exclusion? Ultimately, the prohibitive cost of higher education exposed a hypocrisy so profound that it felt like a betrayal for the generation born into freedom. As a result, successive groups of young South Africans have protested against a system and a government that has failed to make higher education accessible. Some thinkers have rightly pointed out that demonstrations against tuition fees did not begin with the Fallist movement in 2015. In an opinion piece for the Daily Maverick in 2019, Asemahle Gwala, the former deputy chairperson of the South African Students Congress (SASCO) at the Nelson Mandela University (NMU), wrote that the #FeesMustFall movement caused a division ���between the suppressed voices from historically black universities who have been inhaling tear gas since the turn of the century and the newly minted revolutionaries with vast media coverage.���

It���s true that Fallism, as it came to be known, had long been percolating on the campuses of historically black institutions and former technikons (now universities of technology and TVETs). Students at the Durban University of Technology, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, the University of Fort Hare, and the University of Zululand were vocal about the exorbitant cost of tertiary education���clashing with police and private security who responded with brute force. Despite the validity of their demands, their plight was either ignored or dismissed by the media���a staggering contrast to the coverage of #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall. One could argue that the media and political class were far more invested in the fees protests at historically white institutions like the University of Cape Town (UCT), the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), and Rhodes University (RU) because they are the de facto finishing schools for the professional-managerial class.

The Fallist movement was heralded as the Born Free generation���s feisty entry into revolutionary politics. Parallels were drawn between the students of Fallism and the students of the Soweto Uprising of 1976 (or June 16), who took a stand against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. However, that comparison is a glib one. Though the June 16 generation was calling for the overhaul of Bantu Education, they were ultimately rejecting a system that had relegated them to being cheap labor for white capital. The Fallists, on the other hand, were calling on the ANC government to fulfill the promises of 1994.

This raises one of the Fallist movement���s quieter contradictions. While it was celebrated for challenging the mythology of the Rainbow Nation, it was, at its core, seeking to be included in it. It may have excoriated the anc for failing to deliver an equal and free South Africa for all, but the Fallists did not offer an alternative to that vision. In fact, they didn���t believe it was their responsibility. Consequently, the influence of Fallism has largely been confined to the outposts of the academy; in media, business, and the nonprofit sector, while leaving little lasting impact elsewhere. Even in formal political spaces, former Fallists have yet to make an impact proportionate to the radical hopes that were, perhaps too generously, projected onto them. Maybe this is because Fallism wasn���t so much a rejection of the 1994 dispensation, but a desperate attempt to grab its few remaining crumbs.

When former president Nelson Mandela established the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE) in 1995, its mandate was to develop a policy framework to address the deep structural inequities within South Africa���s higher education sector. Like the broader project of building a democratic republic with a new flag, constitution, legal system, and national identity, it was an ambitious undertaking. The nche wasn���t just tasked with reimagining universities. It had to create a unified and integrated system that would encompass universities, technical and vocational colleges, as well as other tertiary institutions. Most crucially, it needed to align this system with the inclusive vision of the anc���s 1955 Freedom Charter, which called for the doors of learning and culture to be opened to all South Africans.

But, by the 1990s the global tide had turned. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had successfully exported neoliberal policies around the globe, destabilizing economies through their doctrine of austerity, privatization, and deregulation. In this unipolar world order, nations were pressured to conform or risk economic and political marginalization. To survive the cuts to government spending, the university was transformed into a business. No longer was it seen as a public good dedicated to justice, curiosity, and knowledge production in the Platonic tradition. Instead, it was responsible for producing a workforce for an increasingly exploitative labor market. As Linda Rimondi writes in her article ���Neoliberalism and the Role of the University,��� the university became a finishing school for ���competitive, self-interested, and self-reliant individuals for whom the greatest goods [were] freedom and consumption.���

Nonetheless, the nche forged ahead with its mission to redefine the university in post-apartheid South Africa. In December 1996, it produced the Green Paper on Higher Education Transformation, laying the groundwork for the Higher Education Act of 1997. The Green Paper proposed measures to redress racial, economic, cultural, and geographic inequalities in higher education and introduce financial support mechanisms for students from poor and working-class backgrounds���the most important being the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). It also emphasized the need for academic quality that met international standards, all while being grounded in southern African and African contexts. Yet, as Driekie Hay and Mabokang Monnapula-Mapesela observe in Higher Education in South Africa, most institutions largely remained tethered to their ideological roots. White English-medium universities continued to operate within an Anglo-Saxon academic framework; white Afrikaans institutions largely upheld Dutch and German philosophical and theological models; and historically Black universities worked to dismantle the bureaucratic and curricular legacies inherited from Afrikaans institutions.

The Green Paper also emphasized the need to ���socialize a new generation [of students] with the requisite cultural values and communication competencies to become citizens of an international and global community.��� Tellingly, this line is a microcosm of the anc���s internal struggle to reconcile the egalitarian ideals of the Freedom Charter with the demands of neoliberal policies, particularly in its adoption of the contentious Growth, Employment, and Redistribution (GEAR) plan. The anc���s pivot to neoliberalism essentially failed to generate the economic growth needed to attract sustained foreign direct investment or reduce poverty. As unemployment and inequality soared, higher education���especially a university degree���came to represent a first-class ticket out of racialized poverty. Yet, South African universities remained untransformed ideologically. They upheld a fee structure that excluded the majority of the population, clung to curricula rooted in colonialism, and lionized figures responsible for the oppression of black South Africans. While the unaffordability of the university reflected broader trends in higher education, it became a potent symbol of post-apartheid failure in South Africa. It���s in this climate���of a university reshaped by market logic and hollowed of its egalitarian promise���that the conditions for Fallism were set.

In March 2015, when political science student Chumani Maxwele catapulted a bucket of feces at the bronze statue of Cecil John Rhodes at uct, it set the tone for almost half a decade of student activism in South Africa. By mid-October that same year, students at Wits University downed their pens and took to the streets to protest a proposed 10���12% tuition hike for the following academic year, igniting what would become two years of #FeesMustFall protests. The movement spread rapidly across university campuses in the country. Students disrupted classes, negotiated with university management, and braved stun grenades and rubber bullets fired by police and private security. The protests culminated in a march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria, where they delivered a list of demands to the government. Later, then-president Jacob Zuma responded by announcing a zero-percent fee increase for that year, a decision that was treated as a victory, albeit prematurely. Two years and several corruption scandals later, Zuma declared that he would fund free higher education in the country���a promise that, to the surprise of no one, never came to fruition.

Like the hashtag movements of the late 2000s and 2010s, such as #OccupyWallStreet, the Arab Spring, and #BlackLivesMatter, Fallism had a digital presence that made it unique within South African movement history. Social media allowed students to provide real-time updates, countering the potential for fabricated stories to be pushed by mainstream media outlets. Before the public became aware of Big Tech���s surveillance and disinformation practices, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook served as informal classrooms where people could engage with postcolonial theory, Black Consciousness, Marxism, Afro-pessimism, black feminism, womanism, and queer theory. The digital terrain also helped students learn from one another, adopting a range of tactics that included occupying buildings, removing colonial and apartheid statues and effigies, shutting down lectures, and turning university halls and rooms into spaces for collective study.

By embracing a more lateral approach to leadership, Fallism was able to avoid the pitfalls that often accompany movements centered around a singular, typically male, charismatic figure. This rejection of hierarchy not only shielded the movement from personality cults but also encouraged the inclusion of identities that had been sidelined in the retelling of liberation history. However, this openness came with vulnerabilities. The confluence of different political perspectives, not to mention the strong allegiances to the main political parties on campus, raised tensions between Fallists. While some leftist mass movements have been able to encompass a range of ideologies, the absence of a common enemy created confusion around the aims and goals of Fallism. This allowed for misinterpretation to flourish, particularly in the heat of online discourse. These gaps also left Fallism exposed to opportunists who co-opted the movement to bolster their revolutionary bonafides. Moreover, the style of ���mimetic politics,��� as Vishwas Satgar wrote in a 2016 article for The Conversation, resulted in actions taken without consideration for their long-term impact, the well-being of students, or the necessary safeguards to prevent activists from burning out.

There is no denying that #FeesMustFall ultimately influenced subsequent revisions to nsfas, which had long been criticized for its outdated system, delayed payments, and mismanagement. Initially, eligible students received funding in the form of loans that accrued interest, a requirement that was ill-suited to the stagnant growth of the South African economy, as a 2019 World Bank report observes. In 2018, nsfas replaced student loans with student grants based on a means test of a household income of R350,000 (about USD19,243) or less. Additionally, the ���Missing-Middle Loan Scheme��� was rolled out for students whose household income was between R350,000 and R600,000.

Globally, several protests drew from #RhodesMustFall. During the summer of the #BlackLivesMatter uprisings in 2020, statues of colonialists, confederate generals, and slave owners were defaced and toppled across the U.S. and Europe. These acts of resistance marked a Western reckoning with the legacy of slavery, empire, racial injustice, and colonialism. The surge of unrest owes some debt to the precedent set by Fallists, who brought their campuses to a standstill in 2015. In many ways, the energy and tactics of those student-led protests rippled outward, inspiring people to demand not only the removal of statues but also the dismantling of the systems they represented.

Perhaps the most impactful aspect of Fallism���s legacy emerged during the #EndOutsourcing and #OutsourcingMustFall campaigns at UCT and Wits. When South African universities began to outsource former employees as part of a neoliberal wave of privatizing aspects of the public sector in the late 1990s, many service workers were laid off, only for them to be rehired through private companies with a lower salary and zero benefits. A host of union-busting tactics neutered the influence of unions and prevented workers from organizing among themselves. In 2011, the Wits Workers��� Solidarity Committee, a coalition of academic staff, workers, and some students, released a damning report on the outsourcing of catering, cleaning, and electrical services, but it never managed to shift any policy at the university.

While strong student and worker alliances had existed at both uct and Wits during the anti-apartheid struggle, the organizing around the outsourcing of workers emerged as a powerful example of the potential of class consciousness within student movements. In May 2015, Wits students protested with dismissed workers of MJL Electrical after they claimed that they were owed money by the university. About a week before the official start of #FeesMustFall movement, the October 6 Movement, a coalition of workers, students, and academic staff from Wits and the University of Johannesburg (UJ), staged a demonstration of nearly 2,000 people to protest against outsourcing. Later that month, uct students marched alongside workers to force their institution to employ workers. These acts of worker-student solidarity prompted both institutions to suspend outsourcing, however dubiously, reviving worker-student solidarity on both campuses. Despite these victories, #EndOutsourcing and #OutsourcingMustFall were largely overshadowed in the media by the more representational narratives of the Fallist movement���a telling reflection of how class and labor struggles are often deprioritized in South African public discourse.

For all their rebelliousness, the Fallists who entered politics were absorbed into the monotony of constituent politicking, abandoning any pretense of shaking up the old guard. Nompendulo Mkhatshwa, the former student activist famously photographed leading a #FeesMustFall protest in an ANC head wrap, became the unspoken youth representative among seasoned MPs for the ruling party, later securing a gig as the spokesperson for the Ministry in the Presidency for Women, Youth, and Persons with Disabilities. Naledi Chirwa, Vuyani Pambo, and Peter Keetse brought their zeal to the Economic Freedom Fighters (eff), an opposition party comprising political stuntmen whose leader, Julius Malema, created the party in his juvenile firebrand image. Even more recent political parties like rise Mzansi and former president Jacob Zuma���s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party have added Fallists like Irfaan Mangera and the controversial Bonginkosi Khanyile to their mix.

There is some irony to this. At the height of Fallism, a common epithet among campus freedom fighters was to call Nelson Mandela a ���sellout.��� They preferred to audit the revolutionary credentials of dead historical figures than the leaders whose parties they were card-carrying members of. But that same sellout, together with Oliver Tambo, Anton Lambede, Ashby Mda, and Walter Sisulu, managed to create the anc Youth League as a direct challenge to the tame leadership of the anc. The Fallists, by contrast, seemed to treat the fulfillment of their own ambitions as a major win for the movement.

A cynical reading of this development would suggest that this group was happy to leverage the trauma of comrades who had been beaten, imprisoned, and tear-gassed off of campus for personal career advancement. But that would presume the Fallist generation was uniquely calculating when it came to their professional futures. In reality, the career-plotting Fallists were behaving in accordance with the value system upheld by the prestigious universities with which they were at loggerheads. Instead of exceptionalizing the resume-building mores of the Fallists, we might concede that the university doesn���t lend itself to the work necessary for radical action. As long as it remains a site of elite formation, it will continue to churn out careeristic graduates regardless of their politics.

Similarly, Fallism became a springboard for identity and media profiteering within the cultural sphere. This trend mirrored the rise of digital social movements in the 2010s, particularly in the U.S. with the rise of figures like DeRay McKesson and Ibram X Kendi, who positioned themselves as the faces and voices of the #BlackLivesMatter movement in 2014 and 2020, respectively. As people increasingly turned to social media to understand the dynamics of social movements, a number of individuals���some of whom weren���t proximate to any Fallist protests���used these platforms to cultivate social capital as revolutionary intellectuals. These ���thinkfluencers,��� as Tsogo Kupa described them in a 2020 review of the film The People vs The People, became emblematic of the liberal identitarian tendencies of Fallism.

According to Kupa, thinkfluencers were predominantly upwardly mobile black South Africans who ���viewed public activism as primarily operating through public speeches, lectures, panel discussions, and books or editorials as tools for liberating the imagination of the country.��� One of the more famous examples is Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, whose rise as a thought leader at the height of Fallism embodied the shift to media-savvy intellectualism. Having been part of the #RhodesMustFall collective during his time at the University of Oxford, Mpofu-Walsh leveraged the anti-apartheid credentials of his father, Dali Mpofu, to position himself as an eloquent intermediary between two generations of South Africans. This nepotistic credibility, combined with an easy-going charm, enabled Mpofu-Walsh to pivot to different careers within media���the latest of which is a current affairs podcast called the Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh Xperience (SMWX).

Usually, popular movements inspire novels, poems, albums, films, and plays that capture the spirit of the times. However, Fallist thinkfluencers repackaged the existential angst and disillusionment of the post-apartheid generation, turning the Born Free generational marker into a niche commodity. All in all, Fallist thinkfluencers seemed more adept at speaking on a subject immune to criticism: their lived experience. Today, Fallism lingers more as a cultural reference than a political force���a symbol of a moment whose energy has largely dissipated.

As a new generation of Matric students prepare for their final exams, higher education remains out of reach for the majority of South Africans. Despite its shortcomings, the Fallist movement prompted South Africa to reflect, albeit momentarily, on the role of higher education in the democratic era. It revealed the cracks within an already faulty system, calling on the government to intervene on behalf of the generation whose liberation it secured.

If Fallism should be understood not as a rejection of the 1994 settlement, but as its final appeal, then it was a last effort to claim the inclusion that had long been deferred. It demanded that the anc deliver on its commitments to redress, access, and dignity, and when the state fell short, it launched a confrontation still shaped by the belief that those goals remained within reach. Far from transcending the university as a ladder to inclusion, Fallism remained animated by its logic. Its rage came not from disillusionment with the university���s promise, but from the conviction that the promise had been broken. But, today that belief is faltering. Graduate unemployment is at record highs. Dropout rates remain high, and graduation rates remain low. The university is losing its material utility while its symbolic prestige lives on borrowed time. Capitalism, too, no longer disguises its exclusions with the language of merit or mobility. The political question now is no longer how to transform the university���but what to imagine when the university no longer matters.

Wahbie Long has argued that South Africa���s future doesn���t belong to the middle class���black or white���but to the structurally excluded, for whom the promise of access was never more than a fantasy. If that���s right, then the next political rupture won���t start in a seminar room, nor will it arrive hashtagged. It will begin at the edges���beyond the university, beyond the dream of Rainbowism���with demands that haven���t yet been named.