#RMF remembered as gift – and a call to continue the fight

A decade after students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa sparked a global reckoning with the legacy of colonialism in higher education, the institution marked the 10th anniversary of the #Rhodes Must Fall movement – which reverberated far and wide under the social media hashtag #RMF – with a symposium that was equal parts remembrance, reflection and recommitment.

Held on 9 April 2025 – exactly a decade after the statue of Cecil John Rhodes was removed from UCT’s upper campus – the anniversary event brought students, staff and alumni together in the Centre for African Studies (CAS).

It was a fitting venue – protesters had gathered here in 2015 to reflect, organise and imagine a different university. A decade later, the university community returned to the same space – to remember and to ask what remains to be done.

Significant moment

Speakers acknowledged the pain, disruption and trauma that defined the movement – but also the profound intellectual and political contributions of a generation of students who challenged universities in South Africa and far beyond to confront the unfinished business of transformation.

“It is a great honour – and a profound responsibility – to stand before you today as we gather in remembrance, in reflection, and in resistance,” Luthando Lukhele, UCT’s current Student Representative Council president, said.

She told the audience she had been in Grade 5 during the 2015 protests, but instinctively understood what was happening as she watched the drama unfold on television.

“Even as a child, it made sense to me. At its heart, it was about acceptance – about black students being allowed to be themselves.”

Her remarks were followed by those of Vice-Chancellor Professor Mosa Moshabela, who joined UCT last year. “I didn’t expect to be taken back so often to 2015. But it shows just how significant #RMF was. It left a deep mark on this institution and on many people,” he said.

‘One PhD is not enough’

He cautioned against sanitising or simplifying the past. “There’s a risk of rewriting history in a way that sidelines the student voice, portraying change as something initiated solely by university management. It’s crucial that the story is told from multiple perspectives.”

Moshabela also called for greater recognition of the intellectual legacy of the movement. “We should extract the frameworks, theories and lessons born out of that moment. One PhD is not enough.”

Roots of resistance

In her keynote address, Professor Shose Kessi, the dean of UCT’s faculty of humanities, traced the movement’s roots to a campus culture “deeply shaped by the values, behaviours and practices of its historically white identity”.

Her research, incorporating student narratives and photo essays she started collecting after joining UCT in 2011, documents the psychological effects of institutional racism on black students. “There were severe consequences – disengagement, low self-esteem, depression, suicidal ideation, stress and dropout.”

Students described classroom segregation, social isolation, and a sense that “they were occupying space meant for white students, all while being burdened with the responsibility of driving transformation”, she said.

“Many spoke of arriving at UCT and, for the first time, feeling black and inferior.” Kessi argued that #RMF was born from such “daily reminders of exclusion that created a sense of never truly belonging”.

One student, in a photo story titled ‘Power and Internalised Inferiority’, described the emotional weight of standing before the statue of Rhodes: “I still felt the power of the colonisers on my colonised forefathers and myself in contemporary South Africa.”

Rotten legacy

The statue, prominently placed at UCT, commemorated Rhodes – a 19th-century British imperialist, mining magnate, and vocal advocate of white supremacy.

“I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race,” he wrote in 1877 while studying law at Oriel College, University of Oxford, in the UK.

When he later became prime minister of the Cape Colony (1890-96), he introduced policies that curtailed the rights of black Africans, including land dispossession and disenfranchisement, laying the foundations for segregationist and, later, apartheid policies.

His donation of land enabled UCT’s relocation to its current site. For many, his statue at the university came to symbolise the legacy of colonialism and institutionalised racism enduring in a democratic South Africa.

Raising a stink

It was in this charged context that activist Chumani Maxwele hurled faeces at the statue on 9 March 2015 – a single, shocking act that ignited a movement.

In the weeks that followed, students occupied the university’s main administrative building, renaming it Azania House and declaring it a liberated space. They confronted management, disrupted classes, painted slogans and clashed with police.

For weeks, the statue stood shrouded in angry protest, frequently surrounded by banners, song, fire and smoke – until, on 9 April 2015, the UCT Council voted in favour of removing the statue, and it was taken down later that day.

Achievements

Kessi noted internal struggles within #RMF that mirrored the race, gender and class divisions present in broader society.

Nonetheless, the movement achieved major victories, of which the removal of the Rhodes statue was but one. Others included considerable demographic change, in-sourced workers, renamed buildings, reviewed artworks, gender-neutral toilets, gender-non-prescriptive student cards and curriculum change that elevated African-centred scholarship.

She also credited the movement with catalysing renewed activism across South Africa for transformation in higher education. This included movements such as #Afrikaans Must Fall at the University of Pretoria, #Steyn Must Fall at the University of the Free State (which refers to the statue of Marthinus Theunis Steyn), and #Open Stellenbosch, which gave voice to lived experiences of racism at Stellenbosch University through the Luister (Listen) video.

All of this built up to #Fees Must Fall (#FMF), the mass mobilisation for free higher education that erupted at the University of the Witwatersrand and soon spread across the country just months after #RMF. Students demanded, not only affordable education, but justice, dignity and transformation. A generation had found its voice.

The term ‘fallist’ became shorthand for the broader movement, which expanded beyond statues to challenge entrenched systems of racial, economic and gendered injustice. As #RMF gave rise to other ‘Must Fall’ movements, it set the stage for further struggles to bring down the barriers that continue to limit opportunities and reinforce inequality – not only in higher education but in society at large.

Globally, #RMF helped spark #Gandhi Must Fall at the University of Ghana, #Royall Must Fall at Harvard University, and #Faidherbe Must Fall in Senegal.

In a 2024 article, scholars Antje Daniel and Josh Platzky Miller also traced the movement’s ripple effects to universities in Malawi, France, The Netherlands, and the UK.

The resonance of #RMF was further amplified in 2020, when the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis triggered a worldwide wave of protest. Many demonstrations – from the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol in the UK to the removal of Confederate monuments across the US – drew directly on strategies sharpened during #RMF. Together, they questioned whose histories are commemorated, whose knowledge is legitimised, and whose bodies are respected and welcomed into public spaces.

In his address, current CAS Director Professor Suren Pillay praised the students of 2015 for giving the world a “new grammar” to speak about oppression and justice.

He also contextualised #RMF in a longer intellectual genealogy of resistance – including South Africa’s 1980s school boycotts and the vision of ‘people’s education’.

Gift that came at a cost

Both Pillay and Kessi described #RMF as a “gift” – an ironic reimagining of what was often dismissed at the time as “destruction”.

“Our students gave us their intellectual insights, their disobedience, contestation, and struggle against racism, coloniality and patriarchy,” Kessi said.

But it exacted a large toll, and “activism fatigue” set in.

“There were many demands placed on students – to address the plight of workers, rape culture, and to raise consciousness in schools and communities, in addition to a decolonised higher education.”

This was “too heavy a burden to carry,” Kessi said. And that is why, she argued, it is important to disavow the notion that #RMF did not ultimately achieve what it set out to do.

The struggle continues

Part of the healing process, Lukhele argued, is for the current generation “to continue with the decolonial project started in 2015 because it’s still a big question in our country.”

She pointed out that many of the underlying issues that sparked #RMF remain unresolved. “We are still protesting,” she said, pointing to ongoing struggles around student accommodation and financial exclusion.

Moshabela agreed that the task is not complete: “We’ve got to make sure that future generations will walk into an environment that is much more welcoming, allowing them to feel a true sense of belonging.”

The symposium’s message was clear: the legacy of #RMF is not merely a matter for archives or anniversaries, but a living issue. As Kessi reminded the audience, using a quote attributed to the activist Angela Davis: “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world – and you have to do it all the time.”