Foregrounding ‘Fallism’ and its Praxis Within the Context of Decolonial and Critical Theory

This article places the #RhodesMustFall movement in its proper context as a pivotal moment that sharpened societal contradictions around power relations. It unpacks what has been termed ‘Fallism’ within its political tradition, framing it as a decolonial response to colonial continuities and enduring matrices of power that sustain the structural asymmetries underpinning the current socio-political order. In doing so, this essay argues for the dismantling (‘falling’) of these oppressive systems to enable the birth of a new political order grounded in egalitarian values. In its overarching argument, this essay navigates the complexities of race relations and what it means to be Black in South Africa today. It draws on thinkers such as Frantz Omar Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and other scholars to foreground the view that the oppressed peoples’ cry for freedom cannot be understood outside the imperative to dismantle oppressive structures and to demand that these systems fall. It is when the oppressed master the courage to call boldly for such structures to fall that the inevitability of freedom becomes a foreseeable reality. Within this realm of possibility, this essay presents ‘Fallism’ as a resuscitation of the decolonising project, laying a foundation that enabled the oppressed to demand the fall of oppressive systems, both within and beyond the university. In so doing, it argues that this ‘Fallist’ logic is central to the #RhodesMustFall movement’s scholarly contribution to the academy.