Everything must fall, but what must rise? Unsettled legacy of the student challenge to ANC hegemony

A year after South Africa marks thirty years of post-apartheid democracy, it would have been ten years since students across South African campuses began mobilizing under the ideological rubric of “fallism.” At a symbolic level, the Fallist movement arguably posed one of the most serious challenges to the post-
apartheid political order. South Africa’s reputation as “the protest capital” of the world is typically consigned to its poor and working-class majority, who regularly contest the state over service delivery, jobs, and other socio-economic goods. What was notable about the Fallist moment, was that it was a mobilization led by aspirant elites — namely students at institutions of higher learning.

William Shoki is a South African writer and is the editor of Africa Is a Country. He was written for Verso, Jacobin, and the New York Times. He serves on the editorial collective for Amandla! magazine and is an MA student in political philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand.

This event is part of the conference Three Decades of South African Democracy: Promises, Perils, Potential to be held at the Watson Institute April 4-6, 2024.