14 - #FeesMustFall and Youth Deconstruction of South Africa’s Liberation Narrative

Summary

Introduction

A nation's historical narrative is a text, both literally as it is printed into history books and metaphorically as it shapes wider discourse and culture. This chapter interrogates the ways in which youth, through participation in the #FeesMustFall protests, are countering and rewriting a key tenet of the South African national text through the manifestation of a new generation's protest culture. We argue that in articulating their protests primarily as an expression of continuity, they challenge the premise of radical change between the apartheid and postapartheid eras, instead framing their protests as the latest iteration of a long struggle against injustice. This chapter examines youth counternarratives expressed in the #FeesMustFall protests through interviews with student participants at Pretoria universities and an analysis of online rhetoric under this hashtag. We focus on the ways in which this collaborative, participatory, and iterative movement engages in the process of rewriting South Africa's dominant national text.

Peterson contends that culture has two possible meanings; “culture as a way of life” and “culture as a range of creative and intellectual practices that are broadly called ‘the arts.’” In the South African context, protest continues to be a cultural practice that unites both meanings through practices such as protest dance (toyi toyi) and song. Within South African freedom songs Jolaosho argues, for example, that [f ]ormative elements of antiphony, repetition, and rhythm constitute a musical practice that organizes protest gatherings, allows for democratic leadership, and fosters collective participation.” Peterson notes that “if we accept that culture is the totality of a people's selfdefinition, development and independence, it then follows that the struggle for freedom will express itself through culture and its social, material and creative forms.” This framing of culture is intimately concerned with power and contextualized within the struggle for freedom and the formation of nations and their narratives. Peterson's framing consequently highlights the ways in which narratives hold cultural power and form systems of meaning that can be interpreted as texts. This perspective aligns closely with Geertz's view that “the culture of people is an ensemble of texts,” and that the real task of studying culture is to gain “access to the conceptual world in which our subjects live so that we can, in some extended sense of the term, converse with them.”