“Rhodes Must Fall”: South Africa’s Ongoing University Student Protests Against Contemporary Globalization’s Neoliberal Violence

Despite apartheid’s 1994 de jure abolition, contemporary university students in South Africa transgressively protest for ongoing, radical, de facto “decolonization” that they allege, and I agree, has not occurred. My thesis historicizes and analyzes the Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) and Open Stellenbosch (OS) protests at University of Cape Town (UCT) and Stellenbosch University (SU), respectively. I analyze how university students’ protests drive counter-hegemonic social movements locally, regionally, and potentially globally. I highlight marginalized students’ imagination and articulation of alternatives to global neoliberalism, which is transgressive and perceived as radical. I contextualize this case study of contemporary counter-hegemony in South Africa through a theoretical-conceptual approach, and a deep, colonial, historical approach. I present three critical premises: (1) neoliberalism is de-democratization and covert authoritarianism; (2) universities are potential sites of critical democratization; and (3) marginalized university students drive a radical, transgressive imagination of alternative worlds. I provide critical historical background to situate South Africa within Contemporary Globalization before chronicling the emergent themes of ongoing protests. Following my South Africa case study, I briefly compare RMF and OS to other university student protests around the globe, including California and Germany. I suggest that under Contemporary Globalization, apparently dissimilar social movements share much in common, including universities’ simultaneous assimilation into, and potential for resistance against, the new, covert authoritarianism and de-democratization of global neoliberalism