On Black Pain/Black Liberation and the Rise of Fallism

by Kayum Ahmed

Fallism is an attempt to make sense of the experiences of Black people in a white, liberal university, through decolonial theories centered on Pan-Africanism, Black Consciousness, and Black radical feminism. The idea of Fallism first emerged as a collective noun to describe student movements at universities in South Africa that use the “Must Fall” hashtag, including #RhodesMustFall (#RMF) and #FeesMustFall. These Fallist movements argue that the university’s epistemic architecture is deeply rooted in coloniality, and that consequently, the university as we know it, must fall.

These arguments that were initially developed by #RMF at the University of Cape Town (UCT) were subsequently exported to the University of Oxford where students created the #RhodesMustFall Oxford movement. Based on my analysis of the #RMF Cape Town and Oxford movements, I seek to establish Fallism as an emergent framework for understanding the university as what Mahmood Mamdani, in Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism Colonialism, calls the “authorized center of knowledge production.”  This nascent framework draws on 98 interviews I conducted with students, faculty, workers, and university administrators at the universities of Cape Town and Oxford, on the basis of which I contended in my doctoral dissertation that the university occupies a paradoxical position for Black and other marginalized bodies: it is simultaneously empowering and dehumanizing; it offers the possibility of acquiring knowledge that could serve as a liberatory tool from the violence of socio-economic marginality (Black liberation), while at the same time, the physical and epistemic architecture of the university can create an oppressive, alienating space for Black, queer and disabled peoples among others (Black pain).

The Emergence of Fallism

The earliest references to Fallism that I could identity can be traced back to the “#fallist” hashtag that emerged on Twitter for the first time on December 9, 2015 when it was used by #RMF student activist, Lindiwe Dhlamini, whose Twitter handle is @IAmAFallist. The #RMF Facebook page employs the term for the first time on February 27, 2016 when it refers to Black radical feminist, Wanelisa Xaba, as a “Fallist.”

The notion of Fallism therefore seems to emerge nine months after the formation of #RMF in March 2015. These references to Fallism therefore appear as the #RMF movement begins to dissipate one year after its formation. Its contested origins appear in the cracks of the movement in December 2015 and become more widely used during 2016 initially by Black, queer women, but later, also by Black men involved in the movement.

Of the students I spoke with, there were some who identified very strongly with Fallism, others who rejected the concept altogether, and a few students who previously referred to themselves as Fallists but subsequently became disillusioned with the idea. The contested nature of what constitutes Fallism creates difficulties when attempting to define it. Alex Hotz eloquently captured this difficulty when she stated: “…I’m beginning to wonder what the fuck Fallism is… I just think there are so many contradictions…” (interview, July 13, 2017). Just before making this statement, Hotz suggested that Fallism emerged out of the three pillars of the #RMF movement—namely, Pan-Africanism, Black Consciousness, and Black radical feminism. These three pillars constitute a decolonial framework that gives birth to the idea of Fallism. It is the weaving together of these pillars, which I have referred to as the #RMF’s decolonial framework, that creates the tapestry for the emergence of Fallism.

Defining Fallism

But what exactly is Fallism? For Susan Booysen in the anthology Fees Must Fall: Student Revolt, Decolonization and Governance in South Africa, “The notion of Fallism highlights the demand for far-reaching change.”  She also cites #RMF activist, Athabile Nonxuba’s definition of Fallism as “an oath of allegiance that everything to do with oppression and conquest of black people by white power must fall and be destroyed.” In the same edited volume, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, who was a leading student activist in the #RMF Oxford movement, argued that “‘Fallism’ is a nascent, complicated and emerging viewpoint, combining aspects of decolonial thought, Black consciousness, radical feminism and pan-Africanism.”  For Mpofu-Walsh  “no protest movement as wide as ‘Must Fall’ can claim coherence. The Must Fall umbrella is not, nor does it aspire to be, a body of literary thought, or a full social theory. Rather, it is a programme of political action.”

Gillian Godsell and Rekgotsofetse (Kgotsi) Chikane reflect on pages 58–9 in the same anthology on what they refer to as the “philosophy of Fallism,” which is understood as the “reinvigorated process in which the decolonisation project has been renewed in the higher education system and in society at large.” While they acknowledge that the philosophy of Fallism has varied meanings across academic institutions, they suggest that “the basic foundations of Fallism reside within the ambit of the decolonization project of the African university….” They draw on Sabelo J. Ndlovo-Gatsheni’s scholarship to assert that this decolonization project is centered on radically transforming the curriculum, institutional structures, and the underlying values that shape the university.

Elsewhere, Fallism is described as an (1) oath of allegiance, (2) a viewpoint, and (3) a philosophy. It is linked to the oppression of Black people, considered as a program for political action, and as a continuation of the decolonization project in African higher education. The ubiquitous nature of Fallism is similarly reflected in my conversations with students, faculty and workers. Like Godsell and Chikane, Wandile Kasibe (interview, June 28, 2017) also characterized Fallism as a philosophy. Sandy Ndelu (interview, July 17, 2017), who used to identify as a Fallist, associated Fallism with “being part of a community of young people,” while Wanelisa Xaba refers to “Fallism as an ideology” in her writing.

During my interview with student activist Simon Rakei (interview, July 12, 2017), he indicated that, “I think Fallism is a real thing as an ideological, theoretical construct to try and understand the world.” For Rakei, Fallism is “disruptive in nature… it was a really powerful tactic.” He suggested that the creativity of the #RMF protests disrupted spaces that he asserted were “abnormal”:  “We are taught to be normal in an abnormal space” (interview, July 12, 2017). This suggests that in addition to being interpreted as an ideological, philosophical or theoretical construct, Fallism also embodies a physical dimension; this physicality requires radical, performative action that “abnormalizes” a space through disruption.

Frances Fox Piven describes disruption as a “power strategy that rests on withdrawing cooperation in social relations.”  This form of disruption offers the voiceless an opportunity to express their demands but does not necessarily translate into a shift in power. For the social movement to gain momentum and to sustain its collective action, Doug McAdam et al. argue that a more formal organizational structure is required that is dependent on various factors including “disruptive tactics” (3). These tactics operate outside “proper channels” and include occupying spaces and disrupting public order. In Power in Movement, Sidney Tarrow adopts a similar position finding that disruption or the threat of disruption is what makes social movements effective.

At the same time, Fallism is not only about disruption. By employing public pedagogy as a theoretical framework to analyze this idea, Fallism appears to take on the characteristics of public intellectualism and performative social activism, suggesting that student protestors are “public pedagogues” who, as Jennifer Sandlin observes, “create a social space within which they engage the larger society in learning about equity, accountability, and democracy.” Patricia Bevie, the chairperson of the workers’ union, NEHAWU, indicated that she joined the student discussions every evening after work: “It was a developing process and a growing process for me like you won’t believe it. I tell you, I used to sit open mouth listening to these students. They created this boldness within me… They were the intellectuals, they never made you feel less than them. It was just, it was just amazing… I learnt such a lot. I’m 52 years old. I have never heard any of these things in my life…” (interview, July 26, 2017)

The kind of public pedagogy that the #RMF movement adopted occurred within, but simultaneously outside the university’s designated learning spaces. In other words, while disruptive moments occur within the precinct of the university, which is a traditional learning space, it also occurs outside the classroom in administrative buildings, lobbies of departments, and in the streets that run between the university buildings. The public pedagogy of the movement challenges existing designated learning spaces, thereby inverting the architecture of the university. Fallism appears to exist in the in-between spaces of the university—the cracks—where ideas developed by the margins conveyed through public pedagogy serve to widen the cracks.

Fallism and the Question of the Human/Non-Human

During my interview with #RMF activist, Masixole Mlandu, he asserted: “in South Africa, the problem is whiteness… anything that is not white is expelled from the category of being human…” (interview June 30, 2017). While most constructions of Fallism have thus far centered on its epistemological and pedagogical dimensions, Mlandu also introduced a dimension to Fallism that raises questions about what/who constitutes the human. But Walter Mignolo, in On Decoloniality, argues that “The question is not ‘what is human and humanity’ but rather who defined themselves as humans….”

The construction of the human and who gets to define who is human is further complicated by #RMF activists such as Wandile Kasibe (interview, June 28, 2017), who stated that:

Fallism cannot be understood outside of the framework of the land. Fallism then becomes a much bigger process whereby we claim our humanity; at the same time that humanity cannot be delinked from land. It is a humanity that is attached, that is basically connected to the ground, to the land that was taken from black people. Even if we claim free education, it is free education that is part of the land. It is free education that is meant to produce people to think creatively about how they will use the land. So the land then becomes an integral part of the Fallist movement. It becomes the national question for us.

Kasibe connects the epistemological dimensions of Fallism that center on disrupting the university as the dominant curator of knowledge, with a Fallist construction of humanity that confronts the human/non-human binary and that is deeply rooted in the land. The connection between land and humanness is also reflected in Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth: “For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.”  The connection between humanness and the land is further explored in Lewis Gordon’s What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to His Life and Thought, especially in his discussion of why he translates the original French title, Les damnés de la terre, into the more literal “The Damned of the Earth” instead of “The Wretched of the Earth.”  In an interview with Cihan Aksan, Gordon explains his position through offering the etymology of “human.” He argues that the word “human” derives from the Latin word “homo,” which in turn, is related to the word “humus,” meaning “dirt” or “clay.” Similarly, the word “damned” is associated with being pushed back into the earth. At an existential level, Gordon argues that the human being emerges from the earth, “a creature with feet on the ground while reaching for the skies.”

Achille Mbembe has criticized the #RMF’s employment of decolonization as a conceptual framework arguing that student activists have used it to describe “a psychic state more than a political project in the strict sense of the term.” He asserted: “If we cannot find a proper name for what we are actually facing, then rather than simply borrowing one from a different time, we should keep searching.”  Acknowledging Mbembe’s criticism, I suggest that Fallism could potentially constitute the “proper name” that reflects what #RMF activists were attempting to achieve in challenging the colonial university.

Fallism as a Framework for Decolonizing the University

Achille Mbembe would most likely argue against the development of Fallism as a decolonial option. At the launch of his book Critique of Black Reason, which I attended in Cape Town, he responded to a question about the appropriation of the concept of coloniality in relation to the #RMF student movement as follows (field notes July 20, 2017):

It’s too easy to pick up a little bit of intersectionality here, a little bit of black feminism there, a little bit of queer theory… and make a potpourri of things… It doesn’t make intellectual coherence… I am for the articulation from this part of our world of ideas, and concepts and theories that speak beyond our own boundaries, that can travel, make sense in America, in Europe, in Asia and elsewhere. We haven’t been able to do that. Because to some extent we are too self-centered, we are too isolationist, we are not even linking with our own continent. We still hear people in South Africa saying, “We are going to Africa”… [audience laughs].

Mbembe’s critique of the #RMF’s decolonial framework as a self-centered, South African potpourri of ideas that cannot travel to other parts of the world, merits further consideration. The framework is indeed a combination of Pan-Africanism, Black Consciousness and Black radical feminism; a compilation of old ideas. Furthermore, given the #RMF students’ own skepticism about how these old ideas translate into the concept of Fallism, as well as the uncertainty about what Fallism actually constitutes, it may seem futile to want to develop Fallism into a decolonial framework.

I think, however, that Fallism could nevertheless be constituted as an emergent decolonial option through a curtailment of its ubiquitous interpretation. For this nascent decolonial option to be comprehensible, I propose that for the time being, its application be limited to the university space, and that the Fallist identity be uncoupled from Fallism. By separating Fallists from Fallism, I seek to move away from the individualized interpretations of what it means to be a Fallist and the personalities and what Mignolo calls “egopolitics of knowledge” associated with those interpretations.

I believe that it may be possible to synthesize the varying understandings of Fallism as an idea comprised of three dimensions: first, Fallism emerges from the disruption of dominant constructions of what constitutes knowledge and how knowledge is developed (that is, epistemic disobedience). For #RMF, this disruption included demands to replace the Eurocentric university curriculum with one that was more African centered.

Second, Fallism exposes the paradoxical nature of the university as both a space for Black people to think (Black liberation), and a space that simultaneously dehumanizes Black people into black bodies (Black pain). This paradox derives from the university’s position as the authorized center of knowledge production and its engagement in epistemic coloniality.

Third, Fallism facilitates the intersections between creative forms of activism and learning (public pedagogy). For #RMF, this dimension of Fallism involved reclaiming the non-academic, in-between spaces of the university and turning them into disruptive pedagogical spaces.

My attempt at developing Fallism into a decolonial option can therefore be seen as advancing the #RMF’s decolonial cause, which is deeply connected to the body-politics of knowledge and takes the form of black pain. Consequently, Fallism as a decolonial option, is a lens through which the paradoxical positioning of the university as simultaneously empowering and dehumanizing for black bodies, can be better understood. It is therefore not only a collective noun to describe the student movements, but a decolonial option that emerges from the university’s margins to crack the epistemic architecture of the university’s epicenter. Fallism represents a decolonial option that flows from acts of epistemic disobedience emanating from the margins of the university, employing disruptive pedagogies that de-link from hegemonic constructions of knowledge, to decolonize the university.

In addition to its disruptive epistemic and pedagogical dimensions that challenge the coloniality of knowledge, Fallism is also concerned with the continuous construction and reconstruction of what constitutes the human (coloniality of Being). This recognition of humanness as an ongoing process of becoming is rooted in the idea of black pain reflected in the #RMF’s mission statement. Consequently, Fallism as a decolonial option deliberately conspires toward the fall of the coloniality of knowledge and the coloniality of Being within the university space. I have chosen to limit Fallism to the university primarily because this is where the idea originated but also because it allows for a more contained development of the decolonial option.

Fallism as a decolonial option is not necessarily new; instead, it offers a new grammar for a, in Mignolo’s words from Epistemic Disobedience and the Decolonial Option, “different beginning” that de-links from Euro-American beginnings. In the context of the #RMF movement, Mbembe asks:

If everything “must fall,” then what exactly must stand in its place? Unless we extend our imagination and properly articulate what “must stand” in lieu of what will have been overthrown, we might end up privileging the politics of ruins over a genuine politics of creative emancipation. To distribute property and the wealth of the nation in a different way, we will need to massively reinvest in various generic human potentialities.

Mignolo, however, takes a different approach from Mbembe; while Mbembe is concerned about “privileging the politics of ruins,” Mignolo recognizes that decolonial options are “built on the ruins of imperial knowledge.”  In her section of On Decoloniality, Catherine Walsh asks, “How do we, and can we, move within the cracks, open cracks, and extend the fissures?”  As a decolonial option, Fallism creates the space for alternative ideas to emerge through cracks in the wall of coloniality, eventually leading to its fall. Fallism however, is not only about the fall of colonial knowledge; it also connects those who are engaged in developing decolonial options thereby facilitating the creation of new structures and building coalitions within and between people and institutions.

Kayum Ahmed is the division director for Access and Accountability at the Open Society Public Health Program in New York, where he leads the program’s global work on access to medicines and innovation. He also teaches socio-economic rights as an adjunct faculty member at Columbia University Law School.  Before joining Open Society, Kayum served as chief executive officer of the South African Human Rights Commission from 2010 to 2015, where he led a team of 178 colleagues to monitor, protect, and promote human rights in South Africa, and oversaw the management of nearly 45,000 cases. Kayum holds a PhD in international and comparative education from Columbia University, various degrees in law from the University of Oxford (MSt), Leiden University (LLM), and the University of Cape Town (LLB), as well as an MA in anthropology and a BA with honors in theology.