FeesMustFall : the 'inner' gender dimensions and implications for political participation in South Africa

Abstract

Mostly, there are four stages in the cycle of an issue-based protest like the FeesMustFall, and each of the stages attract male and female participation for different, yet complementary reasons; in different degrees too, though most times 'inner' and unknown to the participants in the protest. What is more, the phenomenon has extended implications on the polity but scholars hardly focus on it. Survey conducted among selected students of University of Witwatersrand and University of Johannesburg who participated in the FeesMustFall reveals that the female, her body, the male and his ego, among other gender related issues, influenced participation at different levels of planning, action, sustenance and retrieval of the protest. Key Informant Interview sufficiently corroborates it. The general implication is that when it comes to political actions and participation, the male and female genders may, in practice, be less competitive than scholarship already acknowledged. In fact, they are complementary and not competitive as found by this study, and the findings challenge existing competitive discourse that is dominant in gender scholarship.