'Asijiki' and the capacity to aspire through social media: The #feesmustfall movement as an anti-poverty activism in South Africa

Abstract

South Africa has been a democratic country for 21 years, yet racial and economic transformation appears to have stagnated. Recently, the accumulation of frustration and injustice amounted to a wave of student-led protests, the scale of which is unprecedented in the democratic period. This paper, while contributing to broader literature on student protests, focuses on a field that has received little scholarly attention; that of social media as a tool for anti-poverty activism. This paper presents a social media and personal narrative analysis of the October 2015 #feesmustfall student protests to highlight the value of social media in poverty reduction. We locate this paper within Appadurai’s theory of cultural capacity – capacity to aspire [7]. The research findings illuminated the aspects of the politics of recognition, compliance and future orientation within the student narratives. The capacity to aspire framework further advocates for strengthening the capability of the poor and to cultivate their voice.