#feesmustfall

Tensions at Nelson Mandela University as Police Join Private Security at Blockaded Campus Entrance

The Echoes of a ‘Fall’ that Never Quite Landed

It’s 2026, and the air in Gqeberha still tastes like smoke and unresolved promises.

If you close your eyes at the North Campus gates, you can almost hear the ghosts of 2015. Back then, we were told the fees would fall. We were told the gates would swing wide. But today, the only thing falling is the rain on students who spent the night outside because their NSFAS accommodation hasn't cleared yet.

There’s a heavy irony in seeing SAPS “step in” at a university named after a man who spent 27 years fighting for the right to stand where those students are standing. It’s not just about the money anymore; it’s about the math of survival. 34,000 students are surviving, to be exact.

5,340 beds.

Countless dreams are currently "pending" on a digital portal.

#SoBasicallZA, we called it "Fees Must Fall," but maybe we should now call it "The System Must Wake Up." The barricades aren't just made of tires and debris this time, but also of red tape and "readiness assessments" that feel anything but ready.

Image taken from Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh's 'Fallism's Faultlines: The Paradoxes of “Fees Must Fall”'

It has been 10 years since the rise of the #feesmustfall movement, a nationwide call for accessible and decolonized education. At the same time, it seemed as though we were witnessing a turning point in South Africa's democratic evolution; an era where the government and universities would finally dismantle the economic barriers that have historically excluded the majority of black students from higher education. Yet, here we stand in 2025, with students still being denied the fundamental right to education due to financial constraints.

The recent protests at the University of Cape Town (UCT) paint a grim picture of our country's failure to addressing systematic inequalities. Around 600 students, facing fee blocks and housing shortages, marched in protest. Their demands were simple: that students with outstanding fees be allowed to register and graduate, and that the institution provide adequate student housing. These are not radical demands. They are the bare minimum that any just society should guarantee. Yet, UCT's leadership's response was predictable platitudes of "commitment to finding solutions" without substantive action.

The persistence of financial exclusion is not an unfortunate oversight; it is a deliberate policy failure. The South African government had a decade to implement structural reforms that would prevent academically capable students from being locked out of Higher Education due to their economic hardship. Instead, it has continued to underfund higher education while turning a blind eye to the economic segregation that defines our institutions today. Wealth remains concentrated in the hands of the white minority, while black students, many from working class families, are systematically priced out of universities. This is nothing short of a betrayal of the democratic ideals that 1994 promised.

Education in South Africa is not merely a part way to individual success; it is a tool for dismantling the economic legacy of apartheid. For many black students, it represents a lifetime, a chance to break cycles of poverty entrenched by centuries of racialized economic exclusion. To deny them this right is to uphold the very structures of oppression that our government claims to oppose.