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9 - Violence for Social Change

An Analysis of the #FeesMustFall Movement in South Africa

from Part II - Electronic Media and Online Discourses of Conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2022

By
Fiona Chawana  and
Ufuoma Akpojivi
Edited by
Innocent Chiluwa
Innocent Chiluwa
Affiliation:
Covenant University, Nigeria
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Summary

This chapter investigates the extent to which the #FeesMustFall social movement protests of 2015 and 2016 at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, used violence as an ideological weapon to cause social change in the higher education sector. Applying thematic analysis of interviews conducted with eleven stakeholders (including student activists, university management staff, academic union, and government representatives), and data from tweets collected between October 8 and 20, 2015 and September 19 and October 11, 2016, the chapter argues that the movement used violence to disrupt the inherent systematic violence of the state and university space that has hindered students’ socioeconomic and cultural development. Results further show that the movement’s adoption of violence was influenced by Franz Fanon’s “On Violence,” which resulted in the contestation of ideas by the different stakeholders on ways of achieving social change.

Keywords

#FeesMustFallsocial changeviolencesocial movementSouth Africa
Type
Chapter
Information
Discourse, Media, and Conflict
Examining War and Resolution in the News
 , pp. 213 - 232
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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