Comrades, Students, Baboons and Criminals: An Analysis of “Othering” on Facebook in Relation to the #Rhodesmustfall/#Feesmustfall Movement at the University of Cape Town

The years 2015 and 2016 will be remembered at the University of Cape Town along with 1957, 1968 and 1976 as years of protest in which students and staff at the institution staged various demonstrations. This paper focuses on the most recent of the protests, #RhodesMustFall, #FeesMustFall and #Shackville, that took place in 2015 and 2016. Using thematic analysis, this study examines the ways in which the #RhodesMustFall movement credited for the aforementioned protests constituted themselves on their Facebook page, UCT: Rhodes Must Fall between March and April 2015, October and December 2015 and February 2016. The paper also looks at the manner Facebook users commenting on the page represented the movement. A key finding is that the #RhodesMustFall movement constituted themselves as the “in-group” of comrades in ways that worked to build solidarity among the student activists. Reminiscent of apartheid times, throughout the #RhodesMustFall campaign, Facebook users “othered” the activists by constructing them as baboons and savages as a way to dehumanise and discredit them. While the activists largely escaped the vitriol of Facebook users during the #FeesMustFall protest, during the #Shackville demonstration, the #RhodesMustFall protestors were labelled “criminals” in an attempt to bring them into disrepute.