Student Activists or Student Anarchists? South Africa’s Contemporary Student Protests Reviewed

Just over twenty-three years ago, the right to strike or protest received an explicit constitutional entrenchment and thus, legal protection. This would progressively empower citizens, including students, to protest against any infringement or deprivation of their rights or entitlements, and poor service delivery by any stakeholder in the institutions of learning, the government or private sector even. Today, South Africa is inundated with multiplicity of nationwide protests, most of which have been accompanied by appalling levels of violence, anarchy and criminality. Unexpectedly, students have had their share in such protests, and it could be argued, they have been an inspiration to various communities. Hence, this article proffers a critical reflection of the conduct of students during protests at the institutions of higher learning. The article seeks to understand and or explain variables that motivate students to vandalise property or antagonise those that opt to be passive or non-participants of such protests. In comparison to variables identified concerning the 1976 student protests, which were ideologically well grounded, the article attempts to describe contemporary students’ thinking towards protests and why vandalism and anarchism have become, not only conventional, but so intensely socialised. The article adopts content analysis method, and employs crowd theory and collective behaviour approach as tools of analysis. It is asserted that lack of ideological strategy underpinning South Africa’s unending revolution, which is needed to inform students’ struggles, is responsible for pervasive tendencies of vandalism and destruction of property during student protests.