By Nigel Branken
I hadn’t expected to be that emotional. I was sitting at my daughter’s graduation, surrounded by proud families, and hearing parents cheer for their children was deeply overwhelming. The joy in some of the screams—raw, full, defiant—felt like a celebration of something more. As if a promise had arrived, as if a new dawn was breaking. Oppression, take your seat. Watch as our children rise and shatter your chains. That day was a new day.
Rachel’s graduation wasn’t just a personal milestone; it symbolised the collective struggle and sacrifice of the #FeesMustFall movement. Without those courageous young people fighting for accessible education, Rachel would never have received NSFAS funding, and university would have remained out of reach. Yet, even in that moment of victory, the system’s deep-rooted injustices resurfaced: as Rachel begins her Honours, NSFAS funding disappears, reserved only for those pursuing their first degree. Rachel dreams of becoming a psychologist—a profession critically needed in South Africa to address the profound collective trauma we carry from apartheid, systemic violence, gender-based violence, and the ongoing social inequalities we face. Yet, to become a registered psychologist here requires at least a master’s degree, placing significant economic barriers in the path of aspiring therapists from marginalised or working-class backgrounds. This harsh reality highlights how education and professional paths remain largely accessible only to those already privileged, reinforcing the very inequalities the movement sought to challenge.
True liberation demands more than symbolic gestures—renaming buildings or diversifying curricula. It requires dismantling economic and racial barriers that control who gets to learn and who gets to heal. What does it mean when a country desperate for psychological healing excludes working-class and marginalised students from becoming psychologists and therapists? This isn’t genuine transformation; it’s simply exclusion disguised as progress.
I vividly remember 9 October 2016. We were gathered outside Solomon Mahlangu House on Wits University campus, where students stood in tense solidarity as riot police began advancing toward them. Amidst the rising tension, a group of black women courageously stepped forward, removed their shirts and bras, and began walking slowly, deliberately toward the heavily armed police. I remember lifting my camera and following them closely, capturing their vulnerability. Then, instinctively, I turned the camera towards the faces of the riot police. In their eyes, I saw shock and a deep, unsettling fear. The narrative they had been fed—that these students were violent, entitled, dangerous—crumbled before them. They were confronted with a profound contradiction: the supposed aggressors were their own children, vulnerable, unarmed, exposed. This moment, charged with cognitive dissonance, laid bare the violent absurdity of state power. These women’s bodies, in their vulnerability, dismantled the illusion of threat and aggression, revealing instead a stark reflection of humanity, trauma, and resilience.
Caption: One of the most profoundly powerful moments I’ve ever witnessed—these brave women confronted armed riot police with nothing but their vulnerability, exposing the brutal contradictions of systemic violence. (Video by Nigel Branken)
My initial support for #FeesMustFall came from recognising that neutrality in the face of injustice is a form of complicity. But soon, I realised this struggle echoed deeper historical demands. Students were not merely protesting fees; they invoked the Freedom Charter’s promise that “the doors of learning and culture shall be opened.” They challenged not only economic exclusion but also the colonial foundations of our education system. They were calling for a radical shift—an education system that does not merely replicate the worldviews of colonial oppressors but one that actively dismantles structures of oppression and centres the experiences, histories, and knowledge systems of the colonised. They envisioned a liberated education, one in which students could see their realities reflected, their identities affirmed, and their minds freed from the chains of colonial consciousness. This movement called us to revisit, reclaim, and breathe life into promises made but never delivered. It forced us to face an uncomfortable truth: apartheid hadn’t truly ended—it had merely adapted, finding new forms of exclusion and oppression within our supposed democracy.
Students didn’t only protest for themselves; their struggle extended beyond personal interests to address the exploitation and systemic violence embedded in university structures. They demanded an end to outsourcing, recognising that the institutions they studied in were maintained by cleaners, security guards, and other workers suffering from severe exploitation. The students understood deeply that truly decolonising education meant also decolonising the spaces in which they learned, ensuring these spaces were no longer sustained through structural violence and economic oppression. They honoured campus workers profoundly. At one mass meeting, I recall arriving early and taking a seat, only for student organisers to kindly ask us as parents to stand so that their mothers and fathers—the cleaners, security guards, and service providers—could sit at the table. This gesture underscored their commitment to lifting those most marginalised. Ending outsourcing at Wits University resulted in life-changing improvements for workers; I spoke with a security guard whose monthly wage rose dramatically from R3,800 to R12,500, profoundly transforming her life. This achievement reflected the powerful intersection of students’ struggle for educational justice and worker rights.
During the #FeesMustFall movement, women leaders like Busisiwe Seabe, Shaeera Kalla, Fasiha Hassan, Nompendulo Mkhatshwa, and Naledi Chirwa played pivotal roles in organizing and sustaining the protests, yet media coverage often focused disproportionately on male leaders, overshadowing their essential contributions.
At the time, my family lived in Hillbrow and offered our spare flat as a safe space for some of the women leaders. Listening to their experiences, I became acutely aware of the layered oppression they faced. Beyond systemic police violence, institutional hostility, and negative media narratives, these women also confronted sexual violence and harassment, both on campuses and within the movement itself. This exposed a troubling paradox: even spaces dedicated to liberation were not free from gender-based violence.
The movement thus highlighted the critical need to address not only economic and racial injustices in education but also deeply entrenched patriarchal structures within universities. True transformation requires dismantling all forms of systemic oppression. The courage of these women remains a powerful reminder that achieving justice demands confronting violence and inequality wherever they occur.
These women didn’t fight only for their own access—they fought for future generations still waiting outside the gates. My daughter Rachel was one of them. Her path to university was made possible by the brave insistence of these young leaders that exclusion could no longer be normalised. But even with those doors forced open, the journey was not without struggle. As she progressed, the funding system faltered. Without bursaries and her outstanding academic record, she wouldn’t have made it. Education should never be a reward for privilege or performance—it should be a right.
I documented many painful moments. Women bore the brunt of this violence. Busisiwe Seabe was repeatedly shot with rubber bullets and hospitalised—yet days later, I remember her standing at Constitution Hill, singing the decolonised national anthem with such fierce beauty that it moved us all. Her voice, full of resistance, reminded us that their struggle had never just been about protest, but about dignity.
Countless others faced harassment, arrest, and the threat of exclusion. Students like Bonginkosi Khanyile were charged and detained—held for nearly six months before the Constitutional Court was forced to intervene. Yes, you read that right: the highest court in the country, in a full sitting of the bench, had to hear a bail application for a protesting studentwho had been locked up. The state had mobilised its full apparatus to crush dissent, turning peaceful protest into criminalisation. Universities considered expelling student leaders, seeking to silence dissent by weaponising their futures. Police brutality, tear gas, rubber bullets—these were the tools used against students who demanded justice. That so many still graduated was nothing short of a victory. Each cap and gown was an act of defiance. Each graduation, a celebration of resistance.
But through it all, students modelled resilience, leadership, and care. They also modelled radically new pedagogies—practices of collective learning that challenged traditional hierarchies of knowledge. In occupied spaces, corridors, lawns, and under trees, students gathered in learning circles, debating theory, sharing lived experience, and shaping new understandings of freedom. They studied Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, Biko’s I Write What I Like, and other decolonial thinkers, not as academic exercises, but as survival tools. These texts weren’t abstract—they were fuel. Education was happening everywhere: in dialogues, in disagreements, in shared meals and strategy meetings. They insisted on centring African knowledge systems and languages. They reimagined what education could be: not a reproduction of colonial logic, but a site of radical transformation.
The transformation of NSFAS into a bursary in 2018 opened new possibilities—it enabled Rachel’s studies. But even that victory has begun to erode. Structural exclusion hasn’t disappeared; it has shapeshifted. Students are still blocked from registering over debts as small as a few hundred rand. Accommodation costs in gentrified cities like Cape Town have soared beyond reach. NSFAS fails to cover the actual cost of survival, and funding is increasingly unreliable. The same injustices persist—just dressed in the language of budget ceilings and bureaucratic efficiency.
This isn’t a hangover from apartheid—it’s apartheid reborn in subtler forms. The dompas is now a registration block. The police van is now a financial exclusion notice. The rubber bullet replaced with an email that reads: “Your registration has been blocked due to outstanding fees. You may not proceed with academic activities until the balance is settled.” Universities that once called in riot police now speak the language of ‘inclusion’ and ‘transformation’—while continuing to deny access to those who need it most.
So here is my open letter to all those who hold power—whether in institutions, media, churches, government, or families, and to those
To the universities that chose repression over solidarity— you failed your students. You invited police onto campuses, silenced resistance, and crafted narratives that served the powerful. You spoke of safety, but only for the economically privileged. You disguised exclusion as neutrality. And in doing so, you betrayed the very purpose of education.
A university must not replicate colonial hierarchies of knowledge—it must be a space where liberatory thinking takes root.
You are called to cultivate critical minds that can interrogate injustice, not merely survive it. Protest is not a disruption of learning; it is learning. Dissent is not disorder; it is the curriculum of liberation. Lecture halls alone will not transform this country—but liberated spaces, where students can wrestle with the urgent demands of justice, might.
To the state that deployed violence and criminalised dissent— you betrayed the Constitution you swore to uphold. You met peaceful protest with rubber bullets and arrests. You weaponised the police and the courts—not to protect people, but to shield yourselves from responsibility. You were meant to be the engine of liberation, but instead you’ve become an obstacle to it.
A democratic state should not need to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into fulfilling its constitutional duties. Education for all should not require young people to risk their futures, their safety, their lives. This is not justice. This is abandonment. You should be leading the charge toward free, quality, decolonised education—not resisting it at every turn. The question is not whether transformation is possible, but whether you are willing to fight for it without being forced to.
To the media that echoed power and vilified protest— you told only half the story. You turned your cameras toward burning tyres, but away from the cries, the songs, the organising—the heartbeat of a generation refusing to be silenced. You rushed to quote police and university officials but rarely sat with those whose lives were on the line. You cast protest as chaos, never pausing to recognise it as courage. You painted students as disruptors instead of what they truly were—defenders of justice, prophets of a failing democracy.
Too often, you have served as stenographers for power when you should have been the amplifiers of the people. You have the tools to expose injustice, yet you use them to sanitise it. You should be inciting public outrage at the slow betrayal of our constitutional promises. You should be helping this nation reckon with its conscience—amplifying the cries, the courage, and the uncompromising clarity of those who have carried the cost of injustice for far too long.
To people of faith—those whose traditions speak of justice, compassion, and solidarity with the oppressed: we must reckon with the silences of our institutions. During #FeesMustFall, faith communities were everywhere—some wore uniforms and pulled triggers, others stood between students and police, some sat behind closed doors in university boardrooms, strategising suppression, while others marched alongside students demanding justice. The ecumenical paradox was real—our faith was present on all sides of the conflict.
But our sacred texts do not call us to stand with the powerful. They call us to stand with the poor, the excluded, the wounded, the brave. And yet, too often, our mosques, churches, and synagogues chose order over justice, silence over solidarity. This is a call to return to the heart of our faiths. Let our pulpits, prayer mats, and sanctuaries become places of courage. Let our worship lead us into struggle. Let us remember that faith without justice is not faith at all.
To the parents, guardians, and elders—past, present, and future—who cautioned silence out of love or fear: we understand the instinct to protect. But protection must never come at the cost of silencing the righteous. Too often, we fear for our children’s safety more than we trust in their vision. Yet it is their vision that carries us forward. Our role is not to hold them back, but to anchor them deeply. We must be the roots that let them grow bold in struggle. To prepare our children for the world means preparing them to shape it—to question, to resist, to dream, and to act. Let us raise them to recognise injustice, not as something to fear, but as something to confront. Let us lift the weight of fear from their shoulders and replace it with assurance: if they rise for justice, we will rise with them.
Struggle must no longer be something they stumble into alone—it must be something we equip them for, speak of around dinner tables, and honour in our homes. Because to love our children is to prepare them not only to survive the world, but to change it.
To the students who rose—who marched, occupied, were arrested, brutalised, expelled, and shamed—we see you. We honour your pain. We know that some of you still carry the trauma in your bodies, the fear in your sleep, the scars in your memories. We hold deep gratitude for the price you paid to make a better future possible. Your resistance echoed with dignity. Your courage broke the silence. We thank you.
And to those who will rise again—we believe in your vision. We commit to stand with you. Because this fight is not over. We cannot afford for protest to fade into history, not while exclusion remains a reality. We demand campuses that honour human dignity. We need accommodation, food, safety, and security—not just for the wealthy, but for every student. We need institutions free from violence—economic, structural, gendered. We need spaces where human rights are not aspirational, but actual.
#FeesMustFall must not be a moment—it must be a movement, alive until free, quality, decolonised education is accessible to all. Until every child’s humanity is held sacred and the doors of learning and culture are truly open—we will not stop. We are still here. And we are still with you.
Rachel’s graduation in 2025 was not the end of the story—it was one of its most meaningful chapters. Her walk across that stage was made possible by a movement she did not lead, but that reshaped the landscape for her and so many others. As her father, committed to walking in solidarity with the marginalised, I sat in that hall moved to tears—not only by pride, but by the cries of joy and struggle echoing through every name called. Her achievement was not a conclusion. It was a call—a reminder that the fight for justice continues in every student still waiting for their chance.
Nigel Branken is a father, social worker, and long-time activist based in Johannesburg. He has spent decades working alongside marginalised communities, committed to dismantling systemic injustice and building a more compassionate, equitable society. As both a parent and a practitioner, the #FeesMustFall movement profoundly shaped his understanding of struggle, dignity, and education—not just as policy issues, but as deeply personal and political matters. Nigel sees himself not only as an advocate, but as a student of the movements led by young people whose courage, clarity, and resistance have challenged him to unlearn, listen more deeply, and walk more closely in solidarity. This piece is part of his ongoing journey to honour their legacy and amplify their call for truly liberatory education.