Workshop “Visual archives, memories and representations of South African student movements (1976/2016)” – 4 June 2026

Thursday, 4 June | 9.00 for 9.30 – 16.00

IFAS-Research | French Institute,1st floor, 62 Juta Street, Braamfontein


RSVP here, before Monday, 1st June.

IFAS-Research and the History Workshop are pleased to invite you to the workshop “Visual archives, memories and representations of South African student movements (1976/2016)”, on Thursday 4 June, at the French Institute (Braamfontein).

2026 marks the anniversary of two major South African student protests: the student uprisings of 1976, which fifty years ago was a turning point in intensifying the fight against apartheid, and the #rhodesmustfall, #feesmustfall and #endoutsourcing movements of 2015-2016, which reignited and centred decolonial preoccupations in South African universities and beyond.

Both events struck the public internationally, notably through the circulation of images, from Sam Nzima’s picture which became a symbol of the violence of the event itself as well as of the durable systemic violence of the regime, to the removal of the Rhodes statue from the UCT campus next to Sethembile Msezane’s performance Chapungu.

Noting the role of images in the dissemination and memorialization of both movements (Pather 2018, Thomas 2018, and beyond the South African context Mattoni and Teune 2014, Casas and Williams 2019, McGarry et al. 2020), we propose to reflect on the visual archive(s) of the protests, on its (re)constitution and on its uses across time in the re-membering and re-presenting South African student movements. Drawing from the concomitance of both anniversaries, we also want to look at how both movements inform each other, basing our reflection on two main sets of questions:

1/ Constituting and curating the archive

  • What ethical and political considerations go into the making or remaking of the archives?
  • How was the official archive of the 1976 protests constituted? How was it critiqued, lacks and erasures identified, and how was it complemented by alternative archival forms, perspectives and projects? What effect did that have on representations of the student movements?
  • How is the archive of Rhodes/Fees Must Fall, largely born-digital, being constituted today?
  • What are the circulations between the two events and did 1976 inform 2016 in the making of an archive marked by collective, ground work and decolonial intent and practices?
  • What challenges do the materiality (or immateriality) of both archives pose, in terms of curation and access?

2/ Circulations, representations and memory

  • How do artistic and documentary projects engage with the visual archives? What are modalities of disseminating and exhibiting the archive?
  • How can artists and filmmakers obtain and provide access to images? What reflexivity can artistic and documentary works contribute in the reemploy, contestation or dissemination of the archives? What roles do documentaries play in disseminating the archive, and in terms of forging, diversifying or challenging existing representations and memories of the events? What role does filmmaking and art play in inscribing protests as collective memory?
  • Do creative practices, in turn, inform academic and archival practises around student movements?


Provisional programme:

9.30: Introduction

9.45-10.45: Finding, complementing, critiquing, curating the archive of 1976
with Dr Ali Hlongwane and Prof. Noor Nieftagodien (Wits History Workshop)

11.00-11.15: Tea break

11.15-12.15: Documentary filmmaking and the archive of student movements
with film producer Tshego Khanyile (Zinc Pictures)

12.15-13.15: Lunch

13.10-14.45: The visual archive of 2016: constituting the archive and the question of visual language
with Shaeera Kalla (The Movement is Archive), Dean Hutton (CAMP/The Movement is Archive), Tasneem Essop (SWOP) and Dr Deneesher Pather (University of Pretoria)

15.00-15.30: Visit of the photographic exhibition at Wits Art Museum (WAM, 30 min)
Walkabout with Senior Curator Julia Charlton.

15.30-16.00: Q&A and Conclusions.

16.00: End of event.