It has been a turbulent two weeks at South African campuses as the fees issue re-emerged with vigour.

Universities have pointed fingers at the state, which has under-funded higher education for the past 20 years.

Establishing a Fees Commission is a waste of time.

It is self-evident that the average South African household cannot afford to send a child to university at an annual cost of R80000 – whether by going into debt or by some other means.

It is hard to overestimate the impact of the French student uprisings of May 1968 on the philosophy of the so-called post-68 generation, that group of politically awakened academics that included, among many others, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Michel Foucault, Alain Badiou and Jacques Ranciere.

In a little-heralded move in 2015, the Nelson Mandela Foundation released a “position paper” on race and identity. It was written by the Foundation’s CEO Sello Hatang and archivist Verne Harris.

Sadly, it triggered little debate, possibly overtaken by #Rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall, the subsequent political fallout and rise of Fallist movements. This is ironic, given that the purpose of the paper seemed to be re-positioning the Foundation to be a part of the segment of civil society that regards 1990-1994 as a moment of failure.

Sembene Ousmane’s harrowing novel God’s Bits of Wood has been on my mind a lot lately. It explores the political dynamics underpinning the 1947 railway workers’ strike in Dakar, Senegal.

The novel’s potency lies in more than its analysis of the workers’ oppression. Ousmane crafts an intersectional examination of the strike’s socioeconomic implications. He weaves his plot cleverly around the themes of gender and sexual relations as well as the dismantling of patriarchal arrogance and complacency. All of this means that you can’t read the novel from a single perspective.

In April 2015, the statue of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Gandhi Square, Johannesburg was almost covered with white paint by a young protestor before he was arrested. The previous months had seen a sustained agitation at the University of Cape Town for the taking down of the statue of Sir Cecil Rhodes - the imperialist and racist benefactor of the University. The statue came to stand in for a colonialism yet to end.

Modern humans evolved in Africa roughly 200,000 years ago. But how did our species go on to populate the rest of the globe?

The question, one of the biggest in studies of human evolution, has intrigued scientists for decades. In a series of extraordinary genetic analyses published on Wednesday, researchers believe they have found an answer.

Was Frederik Willem de Klerk a brave, visionary statesman when he unbanned the liberation movements on February 2 1990, or did he have no choice and simply acted to preserve white economic interests?

In 2013, I accepted an invitation to be the guest speaker at the Pretoria Boys' High School valediction service for matrics. I did so because I have many friends who attended this school, and so by friendship association, I have always thought highly of the place.

Submission from Adrian Lackay, former South African Revenue Service spokesperson, to Yunus Carrim, Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Intelligence and Cornelia September, Chairperson of the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence, March 25 2015

24 March 2015

The Honourable Mr Yunus Carrim

Chairperson of: the Standing Committee on Finance

The Honourable Ms Cornelia September

Chairperson of: the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence

Per e-mail:

Dear Madam/Sir

Whatever the virtues of South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) – we are assured it still has a few – it was never any good at armed struggle. And no more comprehensive support for that judgment has been assembled than the valuable new book, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, by the University of Pretoria’s Thula Simpson.