The Student Leader’s Dialogue – Developing Student Activism Through Intergenerational Dialogue

20 August 2026 | Senate Room, Wits University

Report prepared by Papama Meleni

 

This account follows a single thread from opening to close. The material battle that has defined student activism in South Africa across every generation represented in the room, over access to higher education, funding, and what a qualification is actually worth once you leave, has not disappeared (Opening Reflections, Keynote Address). What has changed is the space available to wage that fight: today’s students described a campus environment that restricts the tools of activism itself, from regalia to mobilisation, in ways earlier generations did not face in the same form (A Changing Campus). The panel’s response to that narrowing space was not resignation but a direct call for former leaders to re-enter the fight alongside the current generation, rather than observing it from a distance (Panel Discussion, Questions from the Floor). The evening closed by placing the current moment inside a longer history of student activism, and by setting out what SASSFE intends to do with that history going forward (Closing Remarks, Looking Ahead).

1. Setting the Scene

On 20 August 2026, the South African Student Solidarity for Education (SASSFE) and the Wits Student Representative Council brought together current and former generations of student leadership for The Student Leader’s Dialogue, held in the Senate Room at the University of the Witwatersrand. The evening arrived at a moment heavy with anniversaries: seventy years since the 1956 Women’s March to the Union Buildings, fifty years since the June 16, 1976 uprising, thirty-two years into South Africa’s constitutional democracy, and a decade since the Fees Must Fall movement reshaped student funding in this country. Against that backdrop, the Dialogue set out to do something simple but rare: put student leaders from different eras in the same room, and let them talk to each other.

The programme drew an unusually strong turnout of former Wits SRC presidents spanning nearly four decades, from Terry Tselane, who led the Black Students’ Society in 1988, through to Orediretse Masebe, SRC President in 2018. Alongside them sat the current SRC leadership, university management, and senior government figures, including the Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training, Hon Nomusa Dube-Ncube, and Deputy Minister of Finance David Masondo, himself a former Wits SRC President from 1999.

2. Opening Reflections

The evening opened with reflections from the current SRC President, who acknowledged the individuals present and extended apologies received from those unable to attend, before paying tribute to the former presidents in the room. He used the moment to return to the issues still facing students today, among them student debt, accommodation shortages, and the continuing crisis around NSFAS, before revisiting a promise made by former President Thabo Mbeki during his time in office as a marker of how far the sector still has to go.

3. Keynote Address

Deputy Minister Nomusa Dube-Ncube used her keynote to speak candidly about the state of access to higher education, pointing to the shortage of spaces, funding, and accommodation still facing prospective students. She raised a concern that has followed NSFAS since its restructuring: that students who cannot afford accommodation are nonetheless required to pay for accommodation that is expensive and university-accredited, deepening debt they are already carrying. She also confirmed that government is working with National Treasury to identify land on which new student accommodation can be built.

The Deputy Minister argued for a closer relationship between what students study and what the economy needs, telling the room that a qualification which does not lead to employment cannot really be called a qualification, and that every institution should be linked more directly to industry. She closed with a broader challenge to the country to stop settling for mediocrity, a reminder of the importance of voting, and a note of appreciation for the former student leaders in the room, whose presence, she said, showed that their commitment to student activism had outlasted their time in office.

4. Panel Discussion: Reflecting Across Generations

The centrepiece of the evening was a panel discussion bringing together six former Wits SRC presidents spanning three decades of student leadership: Mbali Hlophe, who served in 2007; Nompendulo Mkhatshwa, who served in 2016; Orediretse Masebe, who served in 2018; Hon David Masondo, who served in 1999; Muzi Sikhakhane, who served in 1995; and Terry Tselane, who led the Black Students’ Society in 1988. The discussion was moderated by Dr Mzwanele Ntshwanti.

Dr Ntshwanti opened by noting that the Dialogue had managed to bring almost every living generation of Wits SRC leadership into one room, current and former alike. Terry Tselane traced his own path into student leadership back to his expulsion from another university, while Nompendulo Mkhatshwa reflected on her role in the SASCO Free Education mobilisation and her time on a key sub-committee driving that campaign.

Deputy Minister Masondo, drawing on his own history as SRC President, offered the panel a framework of four pillars around which he argued student work should be organised: campus work, focused on the fight against financial and academic exclusion; the financing of higher education; community work linking student struggles to those of workers; and international work aimed at building class consciousness. Speaking to financing specifically, he pointed to the one percentage point increase in VAT introduced in 2018 to help fund free higher education, alongside the scale of the funding gap still facing the sector, and pressed the room to think harder about whether South Africa’s current economic model can generate the growth needed to sustain these commitments over time. Rather than treating funding as a technical problem alone, he urged current student leaders to think about the kind of society and the kind of economic growth the country should be building.

5. A Changing Campus: Depoliticisation and the Space to Organise

A recurring and pointed theme of the evening was the sense that campus activism today operates under tighter constraints than in previous decades. Current students in the room described no longer being permitted to wear student-activism regalia under university policy, and spoke to a broader feeling that today’s university system makes it structurally harder to mobilise and organise than it was for the generations that came before them.

In response, several panelists were direct in their call to action: that former presidents and student activists of every era have a responsibility to stand alongside today’s students in the fight for change, rather than watching from the sidelines. Deputy Minister Masondo went further, calling on current students to challenge campus rules restricting political expression, including bans on political t-shirts, describing it as a fight worth having.

6. Questions from the Floor

The evening also made room for the audience to engage the panel directly. One question, put to Deputy Minister Masondo, asked what government intends to do for the current cohort of Grade 12 learners who may be unable to access university simply because there is not enough space for them, a question he redirected in part to the economists present in the room, underscoring how closely questions of access are tied to the country’s broader fiscal position.

7. Closing Remarks

Dr Kenneth Creamer closed the formal proceedings with a vote of thanks, using the opportunity to trace the longer history of student activism in South Africa and to recognise the individuals who shaped the movement in earlier eras. The evening then moved into a Student Leader’s Networking Dinner in the Senate Room Foyer, giving current and former student leaders further space to connect informally.

8. Looking Ahead

The Student Leader’s Dialogue was conceived as the first in an ongoing series of intergenerational conversations between SASSFE and Wits, and the strength of the turnout and the depth of engagement on the night suggest a clear appetite for that to continue. SASSFE will be reflecting further on the evening’s themes and the role it can continue to play in connecting South Africa’s student leaders, past and present, in the work still ahead.