‘Must Fall’ movements globally: transnational flows of South African student activism

Antje Daniel and Josh Platzky Miller

Third World Quarterly, 2025, vol. 46, issue 10, 1210-1228

Abstract: This article demonstrates an important case of transnational activist influence from the Global South to both Global North and other Global South contexts. While protests, slogans, strategies and demands are expressions of a specific context-bound protest culture, they have the potential to resonate globally. In this way, specific protests become a model for other social movements, although not without tension or reconfigurations of activism. In this article, we explore the transnational flow of the ideas around ‘Must Fall’, developed initially by the South African student movement. From 2015, several university-based protests in South Africa coalesced under the slogan ‘Must Fall’, most prominently #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall. This ‘Must Fall’ idea resonated transnationally in multiple contexts. However, protests using ‘Must Fall’ also drew from other resources and held different meanings across the different contexts, creating a complex transnational flow of partially connected protests across Africa, Europe, and the US. Nevertheless, the ‘Must Fall’ protests were similar in expressing a need for a radical change to rupture and overcome structures of oppression, especially those shaped by colonialism. This article analyses the Global South genesis and meaning of the ‘Must Fall’ protests and how they travelled, resonating differently in both Southern and Northern contexts.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2024.2419011

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