After vowing never to return to the University of Cape Town (UCT), decolonial scholar Mahmood Mamdani revisited UCT in 2017 to deliver the T.B. Davie Memorial Lecture on academic freedom. When he was asked by someone why he returned, he said, ‘Because Rhodes fell’ (Omar 2017). The #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall campaigns have been the impulse for a renewed interest in the decolonisation of the university curriculum in South Africa. The multi-natured #FeesMustFall campaign is cogently captured by University of Witwatersrand PhD student Katlego Disemelo (2015):
It is, firstly about access to equal and quality education. It is about teasing out the ever-so-confusing intricacies of class relations in post-apartheid South Africa. It is about eradicating the painful exclusion and daily micro aggressions which go-handin- hand with institutional racism within these spaces. And it is also about laying bare the failures of the heterosexual, patriarchal, neoliberal capitalist values which have become so characteristic of the country's universities.
Mamdani's response to being asked why he returned to UCT after a 16-year absence signifies his view that there now is a space in South African universities to have public conversations about issues (un)intentionally silenced in post-apartheid South Africa, which the #RhodesMustFall and the #FeesMustFall campaigns have laid bare. The matters raised by Disemelo, as well as curriculum issues, have largely been put on the back burner in post-apartheid South Africa. This is because higher education transformation postapartheid has mainly been characterised by a proliferation of policies (focusing mainly on governance, funding, quality assurance and student access and success); the merging of institutions; and institutional changes such as the introduction of strategic plans, quality assurance directorates, equity plans, and so. (Le Grange 2011).
The neglect of conversations on matters curricular is not unique to higher education, in South Africa as Ronald Barnett and Kelly Coate (2005: 1) write:
All around the world, higher education is expanding rapidly, governments are mounting inquiries into higher education, more institutions are involved in running courses of study and more money is being spent on higher education, not least by students themselves. Higher education is ever more important to increasing numbers of people. And yet, despite the growth and debate, there is very little talk about the curriculum. What students should be experiencing is barely a topic for debate.