Fallism and the Cultural Politics of Decolonisation: A Dialogue

Join us for “Fallism and the Cultural Politics of Decolonisation: A Dialogue with Fees Must Fall Activists.” Student and academic activists from South Africa will discuss challenges faced during Fees Must Fall protests, and the ongoing question of the decolonisation of education in South Africa and globally. The relation of the protests to place, gender, race and class, and the role of allies, will also be discussed. The group seeks to engage in transnational conversation about issues affecting students and black people in South Africa and the United States, as there are many comparative aspects. Most members of the group are from an historically black university, namely the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, which has presented challenges of greater police brutality during protests, and also less visibility in the media. (See below for bios of the presenters…) *A free lunch will be provided for participants!* Location: Social Movements Lab, Franklin Humanities Institute, Smith Warehouse, Bay 5, Duke University, 114 S. Buchanan Blvd., Durham, NC For Parking and Accessibility info, see: https://fhi.duke.edu/contact-us Bios of the presenters: Xolani Zekani is a postgraduate student at the University of the Western Cape studying towards his Honours degree in Development Studies. In 2015 and 2016 during his undergraduate degree he served as one of the #FMF leaders during the student protests against the proposed increase of university fees across the country. The following year he was elected as a member of the incoming Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania (PASMA) Student Representative Council (SRC) where he served as Public Relations Officer 2016/17. This saw him getting more involved with projects and campaigns that were aimed at advocacy of the student’s daily challenges. Working closely with a group of progressive academics on campus, he became involved with supporting students who were arrested by the South African Police Services (SAPS) during the protests. Though some of these arrested students were partaking in the protests, many were bystanders. There was also victimisation of black African (as opposed to “coloured”/ mixed race) students by the Belville SAPS. Along with other members of the SRC and the progressive staff association, Zekani was tasked with raising R75 000 ($6400) to secure bail in 2016. Zekani continues to strive for a better campus community, and for the rights of those who remain oppressed by structural violence. Sive Shosha is an undergrad law student at the University of the Western Cape. She comes from a village called Lessyton (Ndlovukazi) near Queenstown in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. She is the first born at home and also the first one to go to University. She is what they call “a first generation”. She was raised by Grandmother who means the world to her. She is strongly involved in student activism, and believes that nothing ever changes if we do not take the first step individually to make a change. In her first year at university she participated in #FEESMUSTFALL protests where she was introduced to activism beyond just rebellion. She then joined PASMA which is the Pan African Student Movement of Azania. However her stay there was very brief, as she felt her aspirations as an activist were more suited to the African National Congress (ANC). She then joined the ANC YOUTH LEAGUE (ANCYL) and was elected gender officer of the UWC branch. She is a member of the Methodist church, and a tutor in her community in the Eastern Cape, where she helps with a winter school programme. In 2017 she participated in “The Mendi Centenary Project” at the Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, where she gave a paper on the Mendi (a ship carrying black South Africans that sank during World War One) and Fees Must Fall. She is currently working with Lucy Graham on translating poems about the Mendi from isiXhosa into English. She has also assisted in the Mayibuye Archives at the University of the Western Cape where she has been reading about the history of the struggle against racism and oppression in South Africa. Khanyisile Mbongwa is a MA student about to graduate in Interdisciplinary Art: Public Art and the Public Sphere), at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where she has been a Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Institute of Creative Arts. She considers decolonisation to be an historical process as old as colonisation itself, and was part of the Fees Must Fall movement at UCT. She became a spokesperson for #FMF and the decolonisation of education in the media. Having grown up in Gugulethu, a township of Cape Town, she has been exposed to all three universities in the Western Cape. She studied towards her undergraduate degree at the historically-white University of Stellenbosch, from there she completed an honours degree at another historically-white university, the University of Cape Town, but she also had a residency at the Centre for Humanities Research at the historically “black” University of the Western Cape. Each of these universities presented unique challenges. �While completing her studies, Mbongwa has also become a curator and award winning artist working with performative installation, public art, photography and video – to unpack issues around place, gender, class and racial politics. She has shown her work in and around Cape Town and Johannesburg, Germany, Spain, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Scotland, New York, Sweden and Switzerland. Lucy Graham is a Research Fellow at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. She has a doctorate from the University of Oxford and was a Fulbright Scholar at NYU in 2013-2014. She has been a supporter and ally of the Fees Must Fall and Fallism student movements in South Africa. She is interested in definitions of violence, in the performative tactics used in some of the student protests, and also in cultural production leading up to and produced by the Fallism movement. For some background reading as an introduction to Fallism and Fees Must Fall in South Africa, see: http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/chumani-maxwele-ignites-rhodesmustfall-movement-uct https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/15/sethembile-msezane-cecil-rhodes-statue-cape-town-south-africa https://africasacountry.com/2017/07/fallism-as-public-pedagogy/ https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2016-10-16-in-the-fall-decolonisation-and-the-rejuvenation-of-the-academic-project-in-south-africa/#.WrkYvJNuZQI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksgrJyOrd7A https://mg.co.za/article/2016-10-11-feesmustfall-the-academics-who-stand-behind-the-students https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-02-28-what-happened-to-the-fees-must-fall-movement-leaders/ https://twitter.com/uwcfeeswillfall?lang=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X345nx2iFtQ Decolonised national anthem created/advocated by Fallist students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSB-e5JwdYA