My career as a Fort Hare student ended just nine months after it began. I was expelled from the university following the student strike in 1973, joining the ranks of Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Thenjiwe Mtintso and others who were forced from the university as a result of their activism.

The University of Fort Hare I attended was, in some ways, far different from the university in which Mandela and Tambo studied. Following the 1960 government takeover, outspoken staff members were expelled and new academics, mostly Afrikaners who bought into the government's separate development policy, replaced them. The university's multi-racial character became a thing of the past.

Nevertheless, we continued the fight for democracy in South Africa that had come to define the generations of Fort Harians who came before us – maintaining our reputation as a thorn in the flesh of the apartheid government. As the late Ntombi Dwane remarked, giving title to this book, we were studying ‘under protest’.

The strike that resulted in my expulsion followed very closely after the events of 1972, when Tiro was expelled from the University of the North at Turfloop after giving a fiery graduation speech that attacked separate universities and the apartheid system in general. As Under Protest shows, students all across the country rose up, including those at Fort Hare.

The protest activity continued into 1973 in different forms in each institution. At the University of Fort Hare, a strike was sparked by the expulsion of one student at Beda Hostel, after which university authorities closed the whole hostel. The whole student body could not tolerate this type of response from the authorities, where the sanction was so disproportionate to the alleged offence. These protests were met with a new element – that of apartheid violence – added to the equation by the authorities. Rector J.M. de Wet was determined to crush the South African Students’ Organisation, and he worked in concert with the police to beat back the group's organising efforts.

When students gathered for meetings, the police would be there, armed with dogs. We were attacked, which only stiffened our resolve. I left campus after less than a year, never dreaming in my wildest imagination that I would one day return as leader of the most significant higher education institute in the history of southern Africa.