This article reflects on the successes and failures of student protests in transforming higher education in South Africa through a Marxist lens. The slow pace of change by the government in addressing structural and systemic inequalities has led to disgruntlement within the student body. In their quest to hasten the process, students engaged in…

Memory politics are often regarded as the "soft" issues contested in the aftermath of political and social upheaval. Yet critical public debates on memory, justice, impunity and reconciliation in South Africa prompted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process suggest otherwise. I offer a partial review of some of the key…

Poetry informed by indigenous knowledge systems, whether written, spoken or heard, offers ideal pathways for healing and transformation. Being "medicine" in the broadest non-clinical sense, it is deeply restorative as activism, as caregiving practice and as balm in the face of relentless assaults on our bodies and beings. This I…

This article argues that theories of "decoloniality" provide valuable insights into the social relations of "Model C" schools that have been brought into visibility in particular ways by the wave of student protests during and after 2016. Our starting point is to provide a brief outline of the central arguments made by a…

It has become increasingly evident that the discourse of transformation that has shaped the democratising of higher education institutions over the first two decades of the democratic dispensation in South Africa has now run its course. Over the past few years, and particularly during the tumultuous student protests of 2015 and 2016, students and…