The North African uprisings of 2011, dubbed the “Arab Spring”, which toppled long-standing autocratic leaders and regimes, successfully secured key policy demands and brought about deep societal changes to their countries, offer valuable lessons for South Africa’s #FeesMustFall (#FMF) movement. A combination of the delayed effects of the 2007-2008 global financial and Eurozone crisis, rising inequality and high levels of corrup­tion, combined with oppressive regimes, pushed together young people, with little prospects of jobs, and financially hard-pressed middle classes, to call on regimes run by small elites who controlled almost every sphere of society for democratic, social and economic reforms, to end the disenfranchisement of their rights. In North Africa, students were not the vanguard, but as part of the youth they joined with professionals, workers and opposition movements in a cross-sectorial opposi­tion movement. The South African student upris­ings brought together middle-class and working-class students and different political formations – and in some cases were multiracial too. These uprisings excluded youth outside higher education.

Source: The North Africa Journal January 22, 2017 22:00 UTC