Narrating the 2015 Fees Must Fall Movement: Explanations, Contestations, and Forms of Meaning-Making in the Public Sphere
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Narrating the 2015 Fees Must Fall movement: explanations, contestations, and forms of meaning-making in the public sphere by Michal-Maré Linden Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts (English) in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria Faculty of Humanities Supervisor: Prof. Corinne Sandwith December 2017 DECLARATION I hereby declare that Narrating the 2015 Fees Must Fall movement: explanations, contestations, and forms of meaning-making in the public sphere is my own work and that all the sources I have used have been acknowledged by means of complete references ________________________ M. Linden ________________________ Date i DEDICATION In loving memory of my grandfather Reinhold Rudolph Karshagen who was gentle, humble and treated everyone he met with kindness 21 March 1932 – 21 October 2017 Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honours God. Proverbs 14:31 ii ABSTRACT The events of the 2015 Fees Must Fall movement generated a lively debate in the South African public sphere, one which included multiple interest groups and constituencies. The aim of this dissertation is to critically analyse the public debate that arose around the 2015 Fees Must Fall movement. I approach this debate through the frame of the story by focussing on narratives published in mainstream print media, in student media and on the social media sites, Facebook and Twitter. Aside from more conventional news reportage, I also look at interventions by student activists, government, universities, and other public commentators including parents, political analysts, cultural and religious groups and onlookers. As a literary scholar, I look at the ways in which these events were narrated and the values that were encoded in the tellings. The fact that these events could and were interpreted, explained and rationalised in a variety of ways points to the complexity of truth and meaning-making. However, the point is not to search for the ‘truth’ about what happened but rather to consider the kinds of meanings that were constructed and what these might reveal about the broader social, economic and political landscape in post-apartheid South Africa, including prevailing attitudes, assumptions and myths. Given the prominence of women both in the events themselves and in the ways they were narrated, I will also pay particular attention to the role of gender in the narration of the events and the significance given to women’s involvement in the protests. I start my project by considering how protests have come to be represented in media and discuss the relevance of story-telling as a means of sense-making. I analyse first the accounts that focussed specifically on blame-placement as a way to explain the events. I argue that this blame placement reveals the fractured nature of South Africa. From here I move to accounts that specifically discussed the way in which the movement as a whole should be characterised. I draw attention to the tendency to personalise the movement vs. the trend of figuring it as an act of social justice for a society still plagued by inequality and oppression. I then look at the accounts that concentrated on the individuals in the movement and how they should be characterised, specifically looking at the various judgements of role- players’ behaviour. In concluding, I discuss the various issues and questions the public debate raised and what this suggests about the state of post-apartheid South Africa. Finally, I make a claim for the importance of story-telling as a way to make sense of the particular historical moment. iii KEY TERMS FeesMustFall, student protest, tertiary education, fee increase, narration, representation, story-telling, mainstream media, newspapers, social media iv CONTENTS Declaration .................................................................................................................................. i Dedication .................................................................................................................................. ii Abstract .................................................................................................................................... iii Key terms .................................................................................................................................. iv Contents ..................................................................................................................................... v Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter one .............................................................................................................................. 24 Chapter two .............................................................................................................................. 54 Chapter three ............................................................................................................................ 84 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 116 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 140 v INTRODUCTION South Africa’s most disruptive student protest since the 1976 Soweto Uprising took place in the middle of October 2015. The protests, which fell under the umbrella term “Fees Must Fall”, took place country-wide and were directed at the proposed increase in tuition fees for 2016. Tertiary education institutions were forced to close as students marched to voice their anger and frustration with the proposal. A rich variety of explanations, stories and reactions arose around these events. These involved a range of participants and were often published in ‘real time’ on a variety of public platforms including social and print media. These explanations, arguments and comments were used as an attempt to explain, contest and make sense of the movement, fostering a dynamic debate in the South African public sphere. The fact that these events could and were interpreted in a variety of ways points to the complexity of truth and meaning-making. My goal in this thesis is to elucidate some of the complexity of the debate as it developed in the public sphere and to explore some of the dominant story- strands that emerged. The point is not to search for the ‘truth’ about what happened but rather to consider the kinds of meanings that were constructed and what these might reveal about the broader social, economic and political landscape. What the analysis also makes possible is an exploration of some of the prevailing attitudes, assumptions and myths that inform South Africa’s socio-political space. This will be done by identifying the positions taken by members of the public such as journalists, government commentators, student protesters, university managers, and antagonists and identifying the way in which these same participants framed the events politically, economically and socio-ethically. In considering the various explanations, positions and frames that were offered, I will attempt to draw out the larger patterns and preoccupations of the narration of the events. I approach this analysis both as a journalist who was involved in reporting the events of the movement and as a student researcher, bringing an intimate yet wide-ranging and analytical perspective to the study. It is important to note that I approach this history as a scholar of literature rather than as a sociologist, political analyst, historian, or media theorist. In this regard, my focus is on the stories that were told about these events and the ways in which the protests were represented and constructed in the public sphere. More specifically, my focus is on how language, idiom and rhetoric provide shape to the various representations and 1 constructions. Here I am concerned with the way in which meaning is produced through word-choice, sentence construction and style as well as the use of various forms of figurative language such as tropes, images and metaphors. As the narratives developed, it is also worthwhile to consider the particular rhetorical strategies and devices employed by various commentators and to reflect on whether or not there any discernible changes in the way in which the events were understood or explained over time. Before beginning my analysis of the debate in the public sphere, I will present a brief summary of the historical events. The Fees Must Fall movement was preceded by the Rhodes Must Fall movement which affected a number of South African universities in March 2015. On the 9th of March, students and staff members at the University of Cape Town (UCT) started agitating for the removal of the statue of former Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, Cecil John Rhodes, which was prominently placed at the foot of the famous Jameson Steps. Protesters felt that the statue represented a lack of transformation at the institution in that whites seemed to still be given preference in the university’s curriculum and culture, despite approximately 58% of UCT’s students being of colour (GroundUP, 2015). The movement spread to Rhodes University (Rhodes) on the 17th of March where students of the Black Student Movement campaigned in solidarity with students at UCT and also demanded that Rhodes be renamed to reflect a more