Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness and the #FeesMustFall Movement: Explaining its Resurgence in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Although Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness philosophy was originally developed to confront the marginalization of Black people under apartheid, the recent #FeesMustFall movement has given it renewed relevance in post-apartheid South Africa. The article shows that participants experienced inequality in the form of racialized exclusion, psychological and epistemic domination, and mobilized Black Consciousness as an interpretive framework to understand and articulate their grievances. The qualitative study contributes to the role of Black Consciousness in the #FeesMustFall movement by shifting the analysis from structural explanation to lived experiences and interpretive dimension of the protests.