In the shift to Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning (ERT&L) during the COVID-19 pandemic, remote assessment and feedback became a major source of discontent and challenge for students and staff. This paper is a reflection and analysis of assessment practices during ERT&L, and our theorisation of the possibilities for shifts towards sustainable and transformative approaches to assessment in the global south. We argue that the challenges experienced during the pandemic revealed a view of assessment as gatekeeping, and a conception of quality as exceptional. In the context of ERT&L, assessment strategies based on such views may have further marginalised and disadvantaged students faced with technological, economic, and socio-cultural access issues. We highlight that institutional responses and staff concerns regarding standards and the validity and reliability of remote assessments are evident of affirmative rather than transformative approaches to reimagining assessments for social justice.