South African higher education language politics post #RhodesMustFall: The terrain of advanced language politics

Abstract

In 2015, south African higher education witnessed student-driven activism in the form of various #movements, beginning with the #RhodesMustFall campaign at the University of Capetown, which morphed into the national #FeesMustFall movement. A corollary to these #movements was a language-specific #movement namely #AfrikaansMustFall. Very little literature exists on this latter movement in contrast to the sizeable literature corpus on the other two #movements. While highlighting this hiatus in the research literature, through a combination of extensive literaturereview and polemical analytic auto-ethnographic analysis, the article argues that the languagecontestations in south African higher education after #RhodesMustFall transcend the provincialismthat hitherto defined language politics in the sector. to advance this thesis, the article argues thatsouth African higher education language politics post #RhodesMustFall are an invitation to theterrain of advanced language politics. Advanced language politics transcends the traditional (andsomewhat normalised) realm of the analogous relationship between language, the nation(-state)and reductionist ethnocentrism, and ventures onto the realm of language as a marker and meansto (re)affirm, celebrate and advance value in the furtherance of human dignity, (social) justice,diversity of peoples and knowledges, fluid and multiple identities, fraternity, equality, globalism andegalitarianism – including egalitarian knowledge access.