The Emerging South African Model of Student Activism: A lesson for the Rest of Africa and Beyond

Abstract

Student activism has been prevalent in South Africa to bring about transformative changes at institutional and national levels. That said, the manifestations of student activism have escalated recently and taken on new forms and flavor. These manifestations have previously been typically within the framework of a formal student representation as it has existed in university governance structures. The literature is rich in describing this phenomenon. And yet, recent manifestations have rendered the existing models largely irrelevant as they have failed to encapsulate the emerging traits and practices of student activism. A new and robust conceptual model, called Unbounded Student Activism, developed by these two authors, has been conceived to capture contemporary forms of student activism in the South African context. The paper foregrounds this model to discuss the South African lessons that could be drawn by others in the rest of Africa and beyond in anticipation of steering the student voices and energies to advance African agenda in the global marketplace of competing and complementing agendas and discourses.