Decolonization and Denazification: Student Politics, Cultural Revolution, and the Affective Labor of Remembering

In 2015 students in South Africa mobilized to decolonize universities and to struggle for free higher education. This article discusses these developments in the context of contemporary theories of remembrance, repression and denial and current debates around decolonization and "talking race" in post-apartheid South Africa. The current South African student movement(s) challenge apartheid legacies and white colonial culture, contending that campuses are still dominated by racist symbolic and economic orders. They argue, "As we learn we need to unlearn and develop new epistemologies." This article analyses this process as it unfolds and looks at the unfolding intergenerational tensions and discusses how a lack of affirmative labor of remembrance on the side of the white South African population complicates notions of decolonization in relation to a gendered black nationalism. A point of conceptual reference is the 1968 student protest movement in West Germany, which forcefully broke the silence surrounding fascist continuities within the newly democratized institutions (and society) that was "unable to mourn" and remember.