A Cape Town protester holds up a sign evoking 1976 Soweto Uprising. (Photo credit: Imraan Christian)
Dr. Susanne Klausen, currently in Cape Town, South Africa, has been a witness to South Africa’s #FeesMustFall campaign. In a blog for Active History Dr. Klausen remarks on the importance of history to the student movement for free education, which began October 21.
As Dr. Klausen states:
“It’s been an exciting and inspiring week in South Africa watching the student movement #FeesMustFall in action. (The name builds on the recent successful #rhodesmustfall campaign that resulted in the removal of the Cecil Rhodes statue at the University of Cape Town, or the UCT). The students have placed the demand for free, quality education front and center on the public agenda here.”
See here to read more of Dr. Klausen’s observations about #FeesMustFall.
Dr. Klausen is an associate professor in the Department of History, with research interests in Modern South Africa, nationalism and sexuality, and the politics of reproduction and fertility control. She is the author of Abortion Under Apartheid: Nationalism, Sexuality, and Women’s Reproductive Rights in South Africa (Oxford University Press, Sept. 2015) and Race, Maternity, and the Politics of Birth Control on South Africa (Palgrave MacMillan, 2004), and was a collaborator in the republications of Maud Graham’s A Canadian Girl in South Africa (Alberta University Press, 2015).