Deciphering the Meanings and Explaining the South African Higher Education Student Protests of 2015 16
2015 16 witnessed the re entry in very visible ways of South African university students onto the higher education terrain. This is not to say that students have not been part of steering and shaping higher education through institutional governance mechanisms, or that there have not been student protests post 1994, especially at the historically black universities and at institutions that were merged as part of the restructuring of the higher education landscape after 2000. However, it is suggested that there was something especially dramatic and distinctive about the 2015 16 protests. So wherein lay the drama and distinctiveness of the protests? Did they have to do with the breadth and depth of mobilization, the targets of opposition, and the nature of the demands? Or in serving as a salutary reminder of the tardy pace and limited degree of transformation in higher education and, given the connections between higher education and society, of unfinished business in the wider economic, political, and social domains? How are the 2015 16 protests to be theorized and explained, and their character and significance for universities, higher education, and the wider polity and society to be understood? Could the 2015 16 protests be one manifestation of the "organic crisis" of South African higher education, which necessitates major "formative action" on the part of the state and other key actors?