Problems and Purpose

A lot of deliberative discourse amongst the youth in South Africa happens on Twitter. Some of this discourse has sparked social movements such as the #FeesMustFall movement in October of 2015 and has led to mass protests ensuing all over the country in the following days. Social media is a tool which many young South Africans use to engage in deliberative discourse and by extension to participate in democracy. The government seems to only respond or act when these social movements turn to mass protests and destructive means to get attention. Government institutions do not leverage social media as a means to engage the youth. The deliberative discourse, digital activism and social mobilization which happens on social media are a form of participation in democracy through the digital space. The purpose of this case is to illustrate how the #FeesMustFall movement can be seen as participation in democracy through social media. 

Background History and Context

The #FeesMustFall protests started in October 2015 after the South African Government announced a fee increase for the 2016 academic year (Mavunga, 81: 2019). These protests were said to have started at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and through the power of social media and mainstream news media, the word spread and soon, all government funded institutions of higher education had joined in the movement (Mavunga, 81: 2019). The hashtag #FeesMustFall was born on Twitter in October 2015 as a way for people to find information about the Fees Must Fall movement and participate in the conversation surrounding not only the fees issue but also the desire for decolonization in tertiary education (Mavunga, 2019). This was the first major student protest since the country has put the apartheid regime behind them (Hodes, 2016). During this movement, the students marched to the South African parliament and on campuses (Hodes, 2016). The #FeesMustFall movement was a demonstration of collective frustration with the rising costs of higher education as well as, the government’s failure to move university education from the legacy of “institutional racism and eurocentrism” (Hordes, 2016).

Mandyoli describes the #FeesMustFall movement as an “iteration of long standing battles between students and the state” were students used various tactics in an attempt to pressure the state into grant them their demands for free higher education (Mandyoli, 15:2019). The students used social media to engage and mobilize themselves in what Mandyoli calls “a process of challenging the government’s position on providing free higher education” (Mandyoli, 16: 2019). What started out as a call to action to the state for free higher education turned into so much more than just that. This movement reignited debates around decolonization by looking at colonial symbols and institutional culture (Mandyoli, 16: 2019). This can be seen as a clear participation in democracy by the South African youth and also democratic innovation as the students used social media to mobilize each other and directly challenge government officials to respond to their demands.

It can be said that participatory democracy is the original form of “democracy which originated in small town and city-states as a form of small-scale self-government that was based on a mono-cultural community” which was uniform and had minor differences (Barber, 01:2015). This form of democracy required citizens’ engagement by attending the many assemblies required for self-government (Barber, 01:2015). As societies have modernized, people had less time to participate and attend all the assemblies which were required, and democracy took on a representative form, where citizens vote for someone to make decisions in the best interest of the people.

Barber states that participatory democracy is associated with deliberative democracy, where citizens deliberate and interact with one another in search of common ground and public good (Barber, 04:2015). The world is in the digital age where technology allows people to interact with one another from anywhere in the world. With the advancement of technology, it is now possible for citizens to develop virtual communities where they can facilitate self-governance in large scale settings (Barber, 04:2015). This can be done through social media. The development of technologies allow new possibilities for participatory democracy and self-legislation at a global scale setting (Barber, 04:2015). Social media now solves the scale issue which forced civilizations to turn to a representative form of democracy.

Participatory democracy is an important topic to look at in the digital age because, the increased use of the internet and social media networks have solved the scale issue which had been cited as an issue of this form of democracy for many years. Everyone is in constant contact with each other and has a world of information right at their fingertips.

The only way for South Africa to achieve true democracy is by giving citizens a voice and that voice can be given through participatory democracy. People already use social media to voice their opinions, issues, and concerns about government institutions, institutional practices, and various other social issues. Government institutions and officials should be using these tools to facilitate discourse amongst the youth on issues that affect citizens and come to a middle ground on solutions. This case aims to describe the #FeesMustFall movement as a democratic innovation to participation in democracy by the South African youth. This democratic innovation lies in the engagement and mobilization by the youth using social media.

This case is significant because it allows us to look at and use youth voices on social media in ways that matter. It will show readers that, in as much as social media can be used in its conventional ways to connect with friends, family, and strangers, it was used as a platform to discuss and attempt to come to solutions on social issues affecting fellow citizens. This is an important case because it deals with giving young South African citizens real voices which, if listened to, can spark positive change.

This is an important case because it looks at how Twitter was used by the South African youth (which is an often-marginalized group) as a tool to becoming active participants in democracy. This case also looks at how the Twitter space has been opened up to be seen as more than just some place that the youth come together to play “mental gymnastics” on different social issues and call it a day without the ability to make real changes to the world around them.

Organizing, Supporting and Funding Entities

Despite there being no clear organizing entities in the #FeesMustFall movement, we know that the first protest related to the hashtag #FeesMustFall was started by the students at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (Mlaba, 2021). After the initial months of the movement and the protests, student organizations which are affiliated with some of the leading political parties in the country made power grabs for leadership over the student representative councils which lead the protests at the institutional level (Mlaba, 2021).

Participant Recruitment and Selection

The #FeesMustFall protests and the Twitter Hashtags were open to all people who wished to join the protests and the conversation on social media. They were however specifically targeted at university students as they were the ones who were directly affected by the increase in tuition fees. Although there were no clear organizers of the movement, Student Representative Councils (SRCs) of the different universities took control of the various protests and communicated with students using their official social media accounts which include Twitter and Facebook.  

Methods and Tools Used

The South African youth participated in democracy by voicing their thoughts and opinions on social media and for the purpose of this paper, the focus will be on their use of Twitter to be a part of the conversation.

• Digital activism

Digital activism can be described as a politically motivated online movement which relies on the internet (Chibita, 2016). It aims at achieving certain goals and is directed at the government officials who impose their controls on the people (Chibita, 2016). Digital activism can also be described as the use of cellphones in campaigns for social and political change and these strategies are either internet-based or internet-enhanced (Chibita, 2016). Chibita identifies three categories which online activism comprises. These categories include awareness/advocacy activism where the goal is to highlight information that has been commissioned, omitted, misreported, under-reported or ignored by mainstream news media (Chibita, 2016). The second category is organization/mobilization digital activism where the internet is used to call for offline action such as marches and in the context of this paper, protests (Chibita, 2016). This form of activism could also include sharing posts related to the movement, creating content, and joining the conversation by using the relevant hashtags. The third category deals with action/reaction which is “deliberate destructive online action such as hacking to draw attention to a cause or to cripple the targeted person or organization” (Chibita, 2016). In this context, organization/mobilization activism is most fitting because the South African youth used social media sites like Twitter to organize and mobilize each other for the offline protests. They also used these sites to communicate with each other and voice their opinions on the #FeesMustFall while using the hashtag to group and share the information.

• Social Mobilization

Social media has created a new way to disseminate messages and engage the audience in participatory communication has created a new dimension to social mobilization which makes it easier to organize and disseminate ideas (Dunu and Uzochukwo, 2015). Social mobilization is described as “the process of dialogue, negotiation and consensus building for action by people, communities, and organizations, to identify, address and solve a problem (Dunu and Uzochukwo, 2015). It can also be defined as “movement to engage people’s participation in achieving a specific development goal through self-reliant efforts” (Dunu and Uzochukwo, 2015). This social mobilization can be seen on social media. The most relevant form of this can be seen during the height of the #FeesMustFall movement where social media was used to facilitate the process of dialogue, negotiation and consensus building for collective action to protest against university tuition increases. 

What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation

There are two main ways in which the South African youth participated in #FeesMustFall. Both of these ways employed digital activism and social mobilization as methods of participation. The participation of students in policy making through the #FeesMustFall protests can be seen as an aspect of participation in democracy (Brown, 2017). While the student protests were happening, digital activism flooded Twitter as people were able to educate and inform each other on what is going on at the universities and they were able to comment and discuss ideas on how the government could improve the tuition fees problem. In the same breath, we can say that the students also used social media and digital activism to then employ the social mobilization method through discussions and digital activism on Twitter and Facebook.

Students participated by joining in on the protests and by having conversations around the #FeesMustFall movement on social media and they used the hashtag so that others could find the conversation and contribute to the discourse (Brown, 2017). The hashtag also served as a social mobilization tool because people could find out where the protests were happening and they could also get information on what was happening during the protests and the government addresses.  

Digital activism and Social mobilization were the methods that were used to enlist the participation of the South African youth in the #FeesMustFall protests and the deliberative discourse on social media. The tools which were used for this participation was social media and mass student protests. Students participated through Facebook and Twitter by commenting, sharing and using the hashtags to communicate with others. They also participated through social media by tagging the social media accounts of the relevant government officials and political party officials to gain more attention and support. Students and others also created content which was related to the movement to gain more international attention as well as mainstream news media coverage. Another way in which the students participated was through mass protests which lasted for weeks. The protests and outrage occurred both online and offline.

The main issues that the students were protesting for was for the removal of tuition fees for higher education so that everyone could have equal opportunity to free and fair tertiary education as well as for the movement toward a decolonized system of education. 

Influence, Outcomes, and Effects

The students managed to successfully oppose the increase in tuition fees for institutions of higher education for 2016 (Cini, 2019). They received a zero percent increase on their tuition fees for 2016 and the state along with the National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) put together a plan to help those students who fall under what is called the ‘missing middle’ with some of their tuition fees (Cini, 2019). The missing middle refers to students in the ‘middle class’ who are above the qualifying means threshold for NSFAS but still cannot afford to pay all of their tuition fees (Cini, 2019). This program pays for 8% of those qualifying students’ tuition. This might not seem like a directly successful outcome to the demands of the students because students still have to pay tuition for a higher education. The positive change that this movement has brought about is that NSFAS became a bursary scheme where students who were funded after 2018 were no longer required to pay NSFAS back (Cini, 2019). Another positive change which came with the #FeesMustFall movement is the strides toward the decolonization of the institutional culture and education curricula. 

Analysis and Lessons Learned

One of the main things which did not work well in this case was that the protests turned violent and therefore lost credibility as the mainstream news media only covered certain aspects of the violence by the students. A lot of the conversations around the protest violence talked about the private security guards hired by the university as using excessive force on otherwise peaceful protesters and the students felt like they needed to retaliate with violence. A lesson that could be learned here is that the university should brief their hired guards to only use force in extremely necessary situations to mitigate the violence and the protests. The movement lost its credibility at some point where exams were disrupted and the attention had turned to the idea that the students had shifted their focus from #FeesMustFall to evading examinations and infringing on the rights of those who were prepared and willing to right their exams and complete their degrees on time. Despite this, students received part of what they were asking for and continued to fight for free tertiary education for all students.

References

Barber, B., 2015. Participatory Democracy. The Encyclopaedia for Political Thought, First Edition, pp.1-4.

Brown, T., 2017. From participation to protest: the link between protest and participation: the case of the #feesmustfall protests at the University Of The Western Cape. [online] Hdl.handle.net. Available at: <http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/100977> [Accessed 26 September 2022].

Chibita, M., 2016. Digital Activism in Uganda. Digital Activism in the Social Media Era, pp.69-93.

Cini, L. (2019). Disrupting the neoliberal university in South Africa: The #FeesMustFall movement in 2015. Current Sociology, 001139211986576. doi:10.1177/0011392119865766 

Dunu, I.V. and Uzochukwu, C.E., 2015. Social media: An effective tool for social mobilization in Nigeria. Journal of humanities and social science, 20(4), pp.10-21.

Hodes, R., 2016. Questioning ‘fees must fall’. African Affairs, 116(462), pp.140-150.

Mandyoli, L., 2019. State and civil society: #FeesMustFall movement as a counter- hegemonic force? A case of the University of the Western Cape experience. University of the Western Cape. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/11394/6567 [Accessed: 01 November 2022].

Mlaba, K., 2021. South Africa's Student Protests: Everything to Know About a Movement That Goes Back Decades. GC.org. Available at: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/south-africa-student-protests-explained/ [Accessed: 31 October 2022].

Mavunga, G., 2019. #FeesMustFall Protests in South Africa: A Critical Realist Analysis of Selected Newspaper Articles. Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, 7(1).