An analysis of resistance and regime in South Africa’s neo-colonial democracy

Image by Mark Andrews. Source: Daily Dispatch, 2015.

In 1994, South Africans were supposedly ‘officially’ liberated from apartheid. In the paradox (and parody) that is South Africa, the first African country to transition from violent rule to an allegedly non-violent one overnight, ‘democracy’ is questionable, as many of the ideals that were fought for by generations preceding us has not been achieved. Being one of the most unequal countries in the world[1], we live in a state that is an extension of colonialism—most black people are not simultaneous with a hegemonic society made up of white people and Black elites. Tshepo Madlingozi says that it constitutes a neo-apartheid era[2] as inequality is the worst it has ever been in South Africa’s history, and the current aim of social justice is to be integrated into a society where ‘human’ means to be granted access to a humanity based on whiteness.

South Africa is upheld by a neo-colonial state. Those who the colonial and apartheid regime rendered ‘safe to violate’[3] continues to be disregarded by the current state as the margins remain trapped in a cyclical continuum on occupied linear time relegated into densely packed slums. I will show how this is so by providing an analysis of events/social movements and what they reveal about post-apartheid South Africa’s recent history. Reactions to an already violent system reveal itself through sequential rupture; and is a consequence of socio-economic inequality swept under a rainbow in the name of ‘reconciliation’[4]. As Badat[5] asserts, an ideal of democracy does not eradicate social and economic patterns of exclusion. The rupturing of the fragile rainbow is evident in recent history—the Marikana massacre, Fees Must Fall protests of 2015-2017, and Operation Dudula (meaning to ‘push out’ in isiZulu) an initiative to ‘sweep the streets clean of foreigners’, a fraction of the ‘put South Africans first’ movement by citizens who believe that ‘foreigners’ are taking their jobs, fuelling hatred towards other African migrants. Xenophobia as well as tribalism is a consequence of colonialism. Conclusively, these movements point to the continuation of colonialism attesting to a broken democracy, to demonstrate how we find ourselves ensnared in a manifestation of growing inequality from imperialism, colonialism, and apartheid: settler-colonialism, femicide, and xenophobia, as everyday reality is violent for most black Africans.

Our current state constitutes and enables neo-apartheid

‘The romance of a new country is gone, and the children that should have inherited Mandela’s dream continue to live under the brutalisation of raced, gendered terror[6]… their strategies are not entirely different from the energy, anger, and hope that we associate with the Soweto 1976 uprising.’

– Pumla Gqola in Rape, A South African Nightmare

The Constitution of South Africa[7] was drawn in the spirit of the Freedom Charter circulated and popularised by the African National Congress (ANC) during apartheid. This is a government that, even though they pursued liberation against apartheid, have come to represent an extension of an oppressive regime. There is a large gap between the constitution and the rights it grants. It promises ideals at odds with reality. Pumla Gqola calls it an ‘aspirational document’ as it defines how we ought to behave towards each other as citizens, a definition of us as our best selves, not a truereflection of the attitudes of people, as it gave us hope that was in danger of slipping away. The ‘born frees’ inherited the heavy task of dealing with the unresolved violence, made obvious in the fees must fall protests of 2015. In the 2016 school protests[8] against racist school codes of conduct, it was clear that children could not simply be, their lives are politicised from a young age. As the saying goes, to be born black (and poor) is a crime.

Today we find ourselves in the same language of apartheid resistance, under the ANC’s rule. We draw similarities between our methods of resistance and the Soweto 1976 Uprisings, and we can identify tactics by police against us that were used during apartheid. This is attributed to the fact that there was no proper social and economic redress put into place after apartheid. We were told that we were a rainbow of different people, with neoliberal ideology favouring the Black middle class[9], not responding to widespread socio-economic inequality and that we should practice Ubuntu[10] without soci0-economic reparations. Even though apartheid ‘ended’ in 1994, the problems that flawed the country were not resolved. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was meant to be reconciliatory involved victims and perpetrators but not the public, everyday citizens[11], and seemed more of a national pardon project.  As Madlingozi argues via Mahmood Mamdani, there is an inversion of the settler/native narrative as natives have been turned into settlers, as majority of the population is relegated to margins of the land, and settlers into natives, as they occupy and have made a home in the centre of stolen land[12]. Most natives do not have access to dignity, resources, and human rights, all the things that settlers have. It seems that Black children inherit the heavy burden of the past, whilst white people inherit capital, land, and racism, and the Black elites of government continue the work of the oppressor.

Events in our recent post-apartheid democracy bring up questions of how much has really been achieved in a non-violent transition, when those resisting are assassinated and brutalised[13], not to mention slow genocide of those killed daily because of unequal living conditions. Their dignity does not count in the eyes of the government.[14]

Concerning Violence, Ruling Violence, and Being Reflective to Violence

Sooner or later, the smoke fades, the mirror shatters, and a violent democracy reveals itself. Fees must fall 2015 protests were the biggest mass movement of the people since the end of apartheid, uniting students across the country. These protests called for free, decolonised education (what the ANC promised in the Freedom Charter). The 2015 protest particularly shook the foundations of white-cis-hetero-patriarchy capital, and foregrounded issues of gender-based violence and intersectionality, fracturing business-as-usual of this capitalist institution, which deliberately seeks to exclude poor black students.  The students, for more than 10 years, have exhausted all the non-violent forms of protest that white supremacy approves of in response to the injustice against them and so they found themselves in positions where they no longer have anything to lose nor to bargain with[15]. Put differently, ‘we had nothing to lose but our chains’[16].

The ANC, through institutionalised state organs (the police and private security) spoke the language of pure force[17] to brutalise students, and the state has claimed around 8 lives so far in this movement since its first inception predating 2015 until now, over 600 being arrested in the 2016 protests alone[18](the emotional and physical trauma was documented mostly through social media platforms such as twitter). So, to ask what protesting students have been saying: how are we expected to react non-violently to a system that only knows violence?

The vulgarity of the state was made ever present we saw the brutalisation of students who were villainised in the media as behaving as ‘criminals’ who are ‘senselessly violent’, and just enjoyed burning buildings.

In Concerning Violence, Fanon discusses how revolution itself is a violent process, and to achieve it, violence is necessary. Extending on this, would argue through Wanelisa Xaba (a student at the time who wrote on the protests), that protestors are not acting violently, but rather are reacting to an already violent system. Xaba says that ‘SA is a colonial state that inflicts violence on poor Black South Africans daily, and because structural racism and state violence is normalised, when the poor respond to structural violence, they are problematised and criminalised.’ As Xaba put it, in decolonisation violence is not senseless, but in response to an already structurally violent system that uses violence against any resistance to maintain itself. As Xaba put it, when students were constantly brutalised by the state, there was no public outrage, however, when the students had responded to the violence waged upon them with violence, there was major backlash about the destruction of property. This reveals a state that values property over the lives of students, and the extent to which structural violence is normalised.

Manifold forms of legislated and institutionalised oppression during apartheid [and the subsequent 300 years of colonial domination] capitalised on the brutalisation of black people[19]. The systems have not been changed, so it is still based on operating within (and created for) a violent framework.

Barbara Boswell asserts that uneven and hypocritical responses to violence bring up questions on which acts of violence matter and is condemned or condoned— those who are protected and whose rights matter invoke horror when their bodies are violated, but for violence on others it is business-as-usual[20]. Women have become safer to violate, as the wounds of colonial past have not been addressed, nor the ways in which masculinity operates today and the foundations it is constructed on. I think that Xaba’s discussion on other forms of resistance outside of patriarchal violence is particularly important, as it highlights that a Black Radical Feminist perspective challenges hypermasculine violence produced in protest. Fanon’s writings are often gendered and centre masculinity, or ‘militant masculinity’.  For example, Fanon says that violence is a ‘cleansing force’: freeing the native from an inferiority complex, despair, and inaction, makes him fearless and restores self-respect’. Whilst this (militancy) is necessary against colonial domination, it must not be carried out in a way that reinforces colonial domination of women, if we take into the context that men wage war against women daily in South Africa. This was seen first-hand in the protest, as there were Black revolutionary men who quoted Fanon but harassed women and stormed out of meetings when patriarchy was brought up.[21] An anti-intersectional movement is complicit in the dangers it seeks to expel[22].

Pumla Gqola says in Ruling Violence, ‘given the patriarchal structure of both black and white societies in South Africa, high militarisation could only take on gendered forms and play itself out along sharply gendered lines’[23], and ‘Black uprisings that fail to be intersectional will often access power and privilege to disrupt white monopoly capital by accessing power and privilege through hypermasculinity, whether traditional or cultural.’[24] Gqola outlines that race is inextricably linked to rape: rape of black women was central to slavery and colonialism, a legacy of a past stretching into the present. In the South African Defence Force, aggression, insensitivity, and violence is at the centre of military training[25], the militarised project of masculinity. This is a sort of violence that is the master’s tools, as the police force and army are trained in colonial, army style tactics. Black people who had to carry out the oppressor’s work were trained to devalue and kill black people. Women become the victims of violence from men, even Black revolutionary men[26], who have also become ‘the face of the struggle’, and at times, Black women were seen as hindering the movement if they spoke out on the violence. I think Xaba’s assertion on being reflective to violence is what we should consider (femme, queer and feminist modes of resistance, which was dismissed by hypermasculine resistance, and to use militarised violence means we need to do it in a critical and reflexive way to not harm those further marginalised. This is not to say that people from these groups do not act violently to others, and marginal activists should also be reflective to stop colonial violence from spreading), to not embody a hyper-masculine and patriarchal response to and of colonialism.

So, it becomes necessary to use the Fanonian sense of violence reflectively, critically, and intersectionally[27], to ensure that we are not reproducing violence. Audre Lorde’s words ring true: the masters tools will not dismantle the master’s house. Therefore, the intersectional struggle is one that must be placed at the centre of resisting. Or, put differently by Lorde, there is no such thing as a single-issue struggle, as we do not live single-issue lives. I take Gqola’s assertion that we need imaginative ways of being in the world, to end these cycles of violence, and we need to disown violence everywhere, except in self-defense.

Remember Marikana

To turn now to the most violent event the country has seen post-apartheid: the Marikana Massacre of 2012, where the state had injured around 100 miners striking for higher wages, killing 34 of them. Direct fire was opened on the miners, morgue vans hired well in advance, with the president saying in emails that ‘concomitant actions must be taken’ against ‘dastardly criminal’ miners. This, too, is the language used to describe protesting students, criminals, but it comes as no surprise. Fanon confirms, saying that the native is painted in an ugly light by the oppressor to justify the violence. In the documentary Miners Shot Down[28], one of the protestors said that we should ‘shoot the black boer’, ‘shoot the boer’ being a song previously sang to call for the collapse of colonial rule. This situates the ANC’s rule as oppressive, likening the state to the apartheid one,

‘These English who are coming from different places

I am talking about the black ones known as police

a decision has been made to kill us black people

who are like them

they are being tricked by the boers and the English

to come and kill us because there are no boers here’[29].



Madlingozi asserts that the use of ‘black boer’ has been used to mean black colonialists who are likened to neo-colonial rulers elsewhere that maintain and benefit from a world of apartness[30].

I will use a theory from Achille Mbembe, despite his remarks on fees must fall students being characterised as ‘boko haram’, ‘vigilante’ and inciting terror[31]. Mbembe offers that ‘private, indirect rule’ is what constitutes the tyrannical rule of the state in the transition to democracy, because of connections formulated during colonialism. Private companies (because of free-market capitalism) now control the public, as the economy has become dependent on (extractivism like mining, and other resources that the country has), run by international companies. In the case of Marikana, the current president, Cyril Ramaphosa sided with the oppressor, and acted as an extension of the private British company, Lonmin. Colonialism was the direct exploitation of these goods without guise, and in the post-colonial state, they are masked to appearing as official and legitimate through officialdom of being tied to and acting through the ‘democratic’ government, when it is still colonialism.

Julius Nyerere says in the Arusha Declaration that the successful implementation of socialist objectives depends on who is in leadership because socialism is a belief in a particular system of living, and it is difficult for leaders to promote its growth if they do not themselves accept it[32].

(c) The Existence of Democracy

If a country is to be socialist, it is essential that its government is chosen and led by the peasants and workers themselves.

Nyerere’s words are echoed in a miner’s speech at Marikana: “The blood of a rock driller is no different to the blood of a manager”.

The ANC has shown that they do not accept socialism, therefore they will not act in the interests of the people. Black Consciousness Movement theorists postulated that unless the totality of white supremacy is destroyed, democratisation and transformative constitutionalism would simply lead to a situation where black elites are “extracted” from the black world into the white world[33].

There is resounding truth in what Fanon said, ‘spoilt children of yesterday’s colonialism are today’s national governments, who use today’s national distress as a means of getting through scheming and legal robbery, by import-export companies, insistent on their demands for the nationalising of commerce, their reservation of markets and advantageous bargains for nationals only. They proclaim the necessity of nationalising the robbery of the nation’.

The ANC-led state’s aims are not the radical overthrowing of the system, but the continuation of the settler’s system. They were threatened by the miners, as they, like Fanon says, were revolutionaries because they had nothing to lose, and everything to gain, being outside the class system. And it was true that the threat of violence was the only thing they could use to bargain with, as state forces were threatened that the miners carried spears. The state would only yield when ‘confronted with greater violence’. Organs of state therefore employed violent means to make sure that the movement would dissipate, suffocating the oppressed. As the saying by Fanon goes, we revolt, simply because we can no longer breathe.

Tribalism and xenophobia as manifestations of colonialism  

Operation Dudula is an initiative launched by some South Africans to drive ‘foreigners’ out of the country. Many have been killed in these brutal attacks. We can locate tribalism as a tool of colonial domination, to divide people into tribal zones[34].  

Mahmood Mamdani provides the term ‘decentralised despotism’ to explain the authority traditional leaders were given power over different tribes. This constituted customary (traditional) law to be an extended arm of colonialism in rural areas, as leaders reported to and were in control by colonial authority. Decentralising power meant that the colonial government could have control over large populations of indigenous people. Grouping and dividing areas by ethnicity created further division and antagonisms towards other black people based on ethnicity, reinforcing customary law, which had become a corrupted by colonialism, not merely a preservation of ancient practices.

Decentralised despotism meant that Africans would be excluded from the laws of ‘white’ South Africa and chieftains organised tribes according to ethnic identity. Colonial authorities appointed chiefs where there were none, and appointed leaders who agreed with them and in line with authorities[35]. Laws were ‘announced, not debated’. Ethnicity then became a dimension of coloniality, as it reinforced customs on tribes, whilst denying rights to urbanised blacks. Traditional leaders became law makers, tax collectors, lawyers, etc.

It is interesting to note here that the differences in ethnicity of other groups were used in blanket terms— indian and coloured ethnic complex identities were homogenised and erased by overarching identity categories, but black people constituted the majority, so colonisers intended to divide them even more. Resisting this, Steve Biko suggests that everyone identify as Black (with a capital B to be all-encompassing), because there is strength in collectively. Of course, things have changed over time because of apartheid’s laws that Black people (be it tribal or between races) are antagonistic towards each other.

There are critiques of Mamdani oversimplifying this relationship. I entertain some elements of the conversation Mamdani has put forward: colonisation spreading through the enforcing of tribal identity, looking at it in the broader context of competition for resources which created antagonisms, and factionalism amongst blacks, seen by Operation Dudula.

Tribal identity may be important to some when it is connected to cultural preservation, however, as Mamdani says, some customs had become corrupted with colonial mentality. The idea that homosexuality is not African is one such example. [36]. There have been academics who highlighted that gender does not exist in some African languages, arguing that it is a colonial imposition[37]. Regarding the gendered nature of customs, Mamdani says: ‘boer and British authorities who denounced polygamy as female slavery and bride-price as purchase in women had no qualms about legislating customary code where that treated women as minors subject to a patriarchal chief-dominated authority’[38]. Some African chiefs also chose conversion to Christianity, others resisted colonisation and turned to black nationalism[39].

Samora Machel offers, ‘for a nation to live, the tribe must die’. We can extend this statement beyond borders and think of it through the othering of those from African nations.

Xenophobia is an extension of colonialism, as is tribalism, based on hatred and difference of ‘other’ Black people according to borders.  Xenophobia distracts attention away from the fact that the real foreigners were the settlers who imposed this system, so Black people are competing each other for jobs and resources, also made possible by the current nationalist agenda of ‘South African exceptionalism’. Colonialism breeds ideas of scarcity and of competition.

Fanon says that the native’s anger will find an outlet in tribalism, and while the settler/police dominate the native, they will reach for a knife at the slightest look of hostility from another native. Through apartheid giving some Black people more freedoms than others, the very precarious system of further racial classifications (indian, coloured, black), and dividing all the Black population into different group areas through numerous acts, was a deliberate tool by the regime to fragment resistance[40],  complicating the laws was a way to make it seem more rational and to legitimate suffering, institutionally. Imagine if we collectively revolted against the settlers as Black people, and un-did the borders put up by the colonisers, making it inconvenient for them to exploit labour and extract resources? Colonisers (and neo-colonialists) were very aware that the power of the collective is dangerous and enforced fragmentation and control on every level to endure that collective revolt would not be possible.

What was made prevalent in the ‘must fall’ movements were the embodied nature of the struggle: decolonisation is a personal experience that is in the everyday. What was in theory was also very often lived, on-the-ground experiences that people held or were living through, and we are all in a process of constantly un-and-re learning. Black Consciousness showed that psychological liberation is hard work, dealing with what we feel, how we think, and function in the world[41], and we reproduce the system we fight against when we do not decolonise how whiteness has impacted the way we think[42]about race, gender, sexuality, ability, and ‘foreign’ identity.

Conclusion

Even though oppressive laws have supposedly been removed in this neo-colonial democracy, it is contradictory to say that we inherited histories of the past but call for decolonisation if still live within colonisation, as South Africa is still a colonial state managed by self-serving Black politicians[43], and the ‘post’ colonial era has manifested in a multitude of problems. Even Mandela, the father of rainbowism said in 1993 that if the ANC government does what the apartheid government did to us, then we should do what we did to the apartheid government to the ANC. The constitution does not reflect reality, but its hopeful that we can use it as a tool to hold the ANC-led government to account for the promises they made, and intersectionality proves necessary to end all variations of colonial domination. We work with the lessons that we learn from these movements, as protest spaces invent new spaces for ideological change[44]. We are, indeed, the ones we have been waiting for[45].Aluta continua, the struggle continues.

REFERENCES

Kunene, E., Lest we forget Tutu’s anger and our own faces, Mail and Guardian. 2021. Online: https://mg.co.za/opinion/2022-01-11-lest-we-forget-tutus-anger-and-our-own-faces/

Mamdani, M. Citizen and subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. 1996.

Mamdani, M. Mamdani, M. Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC). Diacritics, 32(3/4), 2002. 33-59.

Ngcaweni, B. and Ngcaweni, W. We Are No Longer At Ease: The Struggle for #feesmustfall. Jacana, South Africa. 2018.

Madlingozi, T.  Social justice in a time of neo-apartheid constitutionalism : Critiquing the anti-black economy of recognition, incorporation and distribution. Stellenbosch Law Review, 28(1), 2017. 123-147.

Madlingozi, T. Neo-apartheid Constitutionalism and the perpetuation of African de-worlding. 2015. Online:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnSsF5SQrdY&t=1088s

Etzo. S., 'The unfinished business of democratization': Struggles for services and accountability in South African cities. Democratization, 17(3), 2010. 564-586.

Fanon, F., Sartre, J., & Farrington, C. The wretched of the earth (Penguin classics). London: Penguin Books. Chapter one: Concerning Violence. 2001.

Nyerere, J. The Arusha Declaration. 1967.

Xaba, W. Challenging Fanon: A Black radical feminist perspective on the fees must fall movement. 2017. Online: Full article: Challenging Fanon: A Black radical feminist perspective on violence and the Fees Must Fall movement (tandfonline.com) 

Xaba, W., The decolonization manifesto. In Decolonization and Feminisms in Global Teaching and Learning (1st ed., pp. 69-74). Routledge. 2019.

Gqola, P. Rape: A South African Nightmare. Jacana, South Africa. 2019.

Desai, R. Miners Shot Down. 2014. Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2GbCoKioEs

Hill Collins, P., & Bilge, S. Intersectionality (Key concepts series). Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA: Polity Press. 2016.

Uhuru Digital, 2018. Everything Must Fall. Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tul8Rs6CoUs

Biko, S., & Stubbs, A. I write what I like (African writers series). Edinburgh: Heinemann. 1987.



Mohapi, T. Land Occupation as a Political Contestation. The Forge, Jhb. 2022. Online: https://theforge.org.za/frg_event/land-redistribution-in-our-lifetime/

The Constitution of South Africa, 1996.

Seemise, O. 2016. What does Mahmood Mamdani mean by “decentralized despotism?” Why was this idea employed in the African/South African context? Online:https://www.academia.edu/32300930/What_does_Mahmood_Mamdani_mean_by_decentralized_despotism_docx

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[1] 10 percent of the population owns over 80 percent of the wealth (the white minority and black elites hold a monopoly over the black majority) mentioned here: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/4/8/what-is-operation-dudula-s-africas-anti-immigration-vigilante

[2] T. Madlingozi., Social justice in a time of neo-apartheid constitutionalism : Critiquing the anti-black economy of recognition, incorporation and distribution. Stellenbosch Law Review, 28(1), 2017. 123-147.

[3] Pumla Gqola in Rape: A South African nightmare. Jacana, 2019.

[4] E.Kunene, Lest we forget Tutu’s anger and our own faces, Mail and Guardian. 2021. Online: https://mg.co.za/opinion/2022-01-11-lest-we-forget-tutus-anger-and-our-own-faces/ Elisha Kunene says that this is as synonymous with pacification and normalising the unconscionable.

[5] W. Xaba., Challenging Fanon: A Black radical feminist perspective on the fees must fall movement. 2017. Online: Full article: Challenging Fanon: A Black radical feminist perspective on violence and the Fees Must Fall movement (tandfonline.com)  [Accessed 10 May 2022]

[6]  P. Gqola., Rape: A South African Nightmare. Jacana, South Africa. 2019.



[7] The Constitution of South Africa,1996

[8] https://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/31/africa/south-africa-school-racism/index.html

[9] S.Etzo, 'The unfinished business of democratization': Struggles for services and accountability in South African cities. Democratization, 17(3), 2010. 564-586.

[10] A quality that includes the essential human virtues, compassion, and humanity in South Africa, popularised by Desmond Tutu.

[11]M. Mamdani., Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC). Diacritics, 32(3/4), 2002. 33-59.



[12] T. Madlingozi., Neo-apartheid Constitutionalism and the perpetuation of African de-worlding. 2015. Online:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnSsF5SQrdY&t=1088s [Accessed 10 May 2022]



[13] like the assassination of Abahlali baseMjondolo’s members (a shack dweller’s movement), and many other activists fighting a neoliberal state.

[14] T. Mohapi. Land Occupation as a Political Contestation. 2022. Online: https://theforge.org.za/frg_event/land-redistribution-in-our-lifetime/ [Accessed 10 May 2022]

[15] W. Xaba., Challenging Fanon: A Black radical feminist perspective on the fees must fall movement. 2017. Online: Full article: Challenging Fanon: A Black radical feminist perspective on violence and the Fees Must Fall movement (tandfonline.com)  [Accessed 10 May 2022]





[17] F. Fanon., Sartre, J., & Farrington, C. The wretched of the earth (Penguin classics). London: Penguin Books. Chapter one: Concerning Violence. 2001. p29.





[19] P. Gqola, Rape: A South African Nightmare.  Jacana, 2019.

[20] W. Xaba., Challenging Fanon: A Black radical feminist perspective on the fees must fall movement. 2017. Online: Full article: Challenging Fanon: A Black radical feminist perspective on violence and the Fees Must Fall movement (tandfonline.com)  [Accessed 10 May 2022]

[21] W. Xaba., Challenging Fanon: A Black radical feminist perspective on the fees must fall movement. 2017. Online: Full article: Challenging Fanon: A Black radical feminist perspective on violence and the Fees Must Fall movement (tandfonline.com)  [Accessed 10 May 2022]

[22] Kneo Mokgopa in Ngcaweni, B. and Ngcaweni, W. We Are No Longer At Ease: The Struggle for #feesmustfall. Jacana, South Africa. 2018. p111.

[23] P. Gqola, Rape: A South African Nightmare, Jacana 2018.  p60.

[24] K. Mokgopa in Ngcaweni, B. and Ngcaweni, W. We Are No Longer At Ease: The Struggle for #feesmustfall. Jacana, South Africa. 2018. p109.

[25] P. Gqola quoting Jacklyn Cock in Rape: A South African Nightmare. 2019. p50.

[26] W. Xaba 2017 terms this the ‘selective freedom fighter’ syndrome

[27] P. Hill Collins, P., & S. Bilge,. Intersectionality (Key concepts series). Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA: Polity Press. 2016.

and it is implied that we must resist intersectionally here.

[28] R. Desai, Miners Shot Down. 2012. Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2GbCoKioEs

[29] 20min:30sec.

[30]  Madlingozi, 2017 outlines that this is a term that Abahlali uses.



[31] W. Xaba., Challenging Fanon: A Black radical feminist perspective on the fees must fall movement. 2017. Online: Full article: Challenging Fanon: A Black radical feminist perspective on violence and the Fees Must Fall movement (tandfonline.com)  [Accessed 10 May 2022]



[32] Nyerere, J. The Arusha Declaration. Online:https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nyerere/1967/arusha-declaration.html  1967. [Accessed 09 May 2022]

[33] T. Madlingozi., Social justice in a time of neo-apartheid constitutionalism : Critiquing the anti-black economy of recognition, incorporation and distribution. Stellenbosch Law Review, 28(1), 2017. 123-147.





[35] O. Seemise, 2016 Seemise points out that some leaders did not agree with colonial authority and fought for communal rights.

[36] W. Xaba., The decolonization manifesto. In Decolonization and Feminisms in Global Teaching and Learning (1st ed., pp. 69-74). Routledge. 2019.



[37] ibid

[38] M. Mamdani.,Citizen and subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. 1996. p117.

[39] T. Madlingozi 2017.

[40]  S.Biko , & A. Stubbs., I write what I like (African writers series). Edinburgh: Heinemann. 1987.



[41] P. Gqola 2019. Rape: A South African Nightmare, Jacana., p69

[42] W.Xaba, The decolonization manifesto. In Decolonization and Feminisms in Global Teaching and Learning (1st ed., pp. 69-74). Routledge. 2019.



[43] Ibid.

[44] S. Etzo. 'The unfinished business of democratization': Struggles for services and accountability in South African cities. Democratization, 17(3), 2010. 564-586.

[45] Fees must fall protestors borrowed this term from Alice Walker in protests.