#RHODESMUSTFALL: USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO “DECOLONISE”

LEARNING SPACES FOR SOUTH AFRICAN HIGHER EDUCATION

INSTITUTIONS: A CULTURAL HISTORICAL ACTIVITY THEORY
APPROACH

S. Francis*
e-mail: [email protected]

J. Hardman*
e-mail: [email protected]

*School of Education
University of Cape Town
Cape Town, South Africa

ABSTRACT
Since the end of 2015, South African universities have been the stage of ongoing student protests
that seek to shift the status quo of Higher Education Institutes through calls to decolonise the
curriculum and enable free access to HEIs for all. One tool that students have increasingly turned
to, to voice their opinions has been social media. In this article we argue that one can use Cultural
Historical Activity Theory to understand how the activity systems of the traditional academy are
shifting the wake of social media, with traditional power relations becoming more porous as
students’ voices gain an audience. By tracing the historical development of CHAT, we show how
4th generation CHAT enables us to analyse potential power shifts in HEIs brought about through
the use of social media.
Keywords: decolonising the curriculum Higher Education, cultural historical activity theory

INTRODUCTION
2015 was rife with controversy in South Africa, but it was an exciting time as important
conversations around access to higher education, the inclusivity of South African universities
and decolonisation became part of public conversation (Kamanzi 2015; Hlophe 2015; Masondo
2015). This movement became known under the hashtag of #Rhodesmustfall, indicating the
need to decolonise academic spaces felt by those in the movement. In subsequent years this
movement has transformed into #feesmustfall, indicating the students’ driving motive to gain
access to institutes of higher learning. These discussions were accompanied by days of massive
student demonstrations across South Africa. Social media played an important role in not only
organising the protests but also allowing information around these important issues to be shared

South African Journal of Higher Education http://dx.doi.org/10.20853/32-4-2584

Volume 32 | Number 4 | 2018 | pages 66‒80 eISSN 1753-5913
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Francis and Hardman #Rhodesmustfall: Using social media to “decolonise” learning spaces

between students and the general public. With knowledge production and learning activities
often overlooked during activism (Choudry and Kapoor 2010), we look at the potential for
Higher Education Institutions to adopt social media as learning spaces and knowledge
production spaces that are inclusive, egalitarian and decolonised. In this article, we explore how
Cultural Historical Activity Theory can be used as a framework to explore the potential for
social media to facilitate the decolonisation of South African universities.

BACKGROUND
On 9 March 2015, Chumani Maxwele, a UCT student, flung faeces at statue of Cecil John
Rhodes on the University of Cape Town’s upper campus (Verbaan 2015). This was part of a
protest of about a dozen students at the university with a call to decolonize the university and
stop white imperialism (Verbaan 2015). The movement that followed, the Rhodes Must Fall
(RMF) movement, has been making headlines ever since for their protests across South Africa
which have multiplied in numbers and intensity. This movement criticises universities for not
transforming themselves and breaking ties with their colonial pasts (Hlophe 2015; Kamanzi
2015). The movement also aimed to give voice to the voiceless students who feel marginalized,
alienated and underrepresented by the universities’ curricula and historic cultural and colonial
practices (Hlophe 2015). Colonial artwork has been attacked by students and a call to rework
the curriculum has also been made (Kamanzi 2015). There are continuous discussions “about
how these artefacts and names reflect the continued exclusion of different epistemologies of
thought, different races, classes and gender based oppressions” (Kamanzi 2015). Riding on the
coattails of the RMF movement came the Fees Must Fall (FMF) movement through which
students demanded the abolishment of tuition fees at South African universities. If South
African universities do not improve access for students from previously disadvantaged
communities (access not just in admission, but in tuition and an accessible curriculum), then
South African universities will not be transformative in their education practices but will instead
perpetuate the socioeconomic inequalities that exist in our societies (Kamanzi 2015).

PROBLEM
The impetus for this article derives from an interest in how the Rhodes Must Fall movement
successfully leveraged social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to organize their protests
and raise awareness of the issues that they are protesting against (Masondo 2015). The creation
of a Facebook group and the twitter hashtag “#RhodesMustFall” was used to send information
to the members and prospective members (Masondo 2015). We see in this use of social media
the potential to disrupt traditional power relations in the academy, giving students a voice they

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previously did not have. Outside of the communication channels set up by the group on social
media, there were also news articles released on social media by the general media that reported
on the protests and the issues around them. Social Media users also used their accounts to
provide eye-witness reports and construct opinion pieces about the protests and their related
issues. While these posts became a space for controversy and conflict, they also allowed for
social media users to discuss, debate, construct their knowledge around the related issues and
challenge their understanding of these issues. Social media provided a platform to the general
public, students and higher education institutions to have access to the information about the
organization of the protests as well as to get an understand of the affective and intellectual
concerns held by students and the general public.
The use of social media by activists has been observed and studied in many contexts,
globally. Across the world students have used social media to organize protests and distribute
messages about various socio-political and socioeconomic issues. These contexts vary from
Western, first world contexts such as Occupy Wall street (Gerbaudo 2012), the “indignados”
movement in Spain (Gerbaudo 2012) and “Unibrennt” in Austria (Maireder and
Schwarzenegger 2012) to third world contexts like Chile (Valenzuela 2013) and Egypt (Lim
2012; Gerbaudo 2012). Through these studies, we have learned how students use social media
to communicate and organize themselves and how social media can provide a way of mobilizing
disparate groups without real leaders or “soft leaders” (Gerbaudo 2012; Maireder and
Schwarzenegger 2012).
While the organization and social issues involved in social movements have been well
researched, “the dynamics, politics, and richness of knowledge production within social
movements and activist contexts are often overlooked in scholarly literature, and sometimes
even in the movements them-selves” (Choudry and Kapoor 2010, 1). They state quite
eloquently:

“As we argue elsewhere (Choudry, 2007, 2008; Kapoor, 2009a), the voices, ideas, perspectives
and theories produced by those engaged in social struggles are often ignored, rendered invisible,
or overwritten with accounts by professionalized or academic experts. In the realm of academic
knowledge production, original, single authorship is valued, which inadvertently contributes to a
tendency to fail to acknowledge the intellectual contributions of activism, or to recognize the
lineages of ideas and theories that have been forged outside of academe, often incrementally,
collectively, and informally. That said, we do not intend to imply that these various epistemologies
of knowledge (academic and activist) and processes of knowledge production and learning
(formal, nonformal, and informal) necessarily exist in completely separate universes.” (Choudry
and Kapoor 2010, 2).

In this article, therefore, we aim to explore how social media was used to aid the processes of

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knowledge production and learning during the Rhodes must fall movement. Henk Eijkman
describes social media and other Web 2.0 as egalitarian transcultural contact zones which
enables us “to create post-colonial learning spaces as egalitarian transcultural contact zones”
(Eijkman 2008, 630). This means that social media may provide learning spaces that are more
inclusive and representative of the both universities’ academic and administrative staff and its
students, and it might allow an opportunity for marginalized voices to be heard and for students
to feel less alienated. Understanding if and how social media was Incorporated to provide
inclusive conversations and learning around decolonisation, the issues related to the protests,
can allow universities with broader and deeper perspectives around how we can leverage these
spaces of decolonised teaching spaces. This might be an important step the decolonisation and
transformation of our universities.

CULTURAL HISTORICAL ACTIVITY THEORY

Cultural Historically activity theory was founded on Lev Vygotsky’s theory of learning, where
he described human learning as the process of achieving higher cognitive functions using
cultural tools through a process called mediation (Hardman and Amory 2015). Subjects can
perform lower cognitive functions and act on an object without any mediation, because such
lower cognitive functions are innate (Hardman and Amory 2015). However, higher order
functions need to be mediated in order for the subject to successfully achieve their object
(Hardman and Amory 2015) (see Figure 1). Vygotsky proposed that mediation was achieved
through the use of cultural tools, such as language, and allowed the subject to develop higher
cognitive functions. Vygotsky’s proposed description learning meant that learning was not an
individual process, but was socially culturally situated.

Figure 1: Vygotsky’s Human Learning through mediation (Hardman and Amory 2015)

SECOND GENERATION ACTIVITY THEORY

The most notable Psychologist to further develop Vygotsky’s theory of learning is Aleksei

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Francis and Hardman #Rhodesmustfall: Using social media to “decolonise” learning spaces

Leontiev, whose work indicated that Vygotsky’s theory of learning could not account for
activities that involved collective action (Hardman and Amory 2015). Leontiev explained the
distinction between individual action and collective activity by use of his famous example of
the “primeval collective hunt” (Hardman and Amory 2015, 7). In this example, a group of
hunters split themselves into two groups while hunting. Each group had their own set of actions.
One group would beat the bush to scare the game in the opposite direction, while the other
group would wait in the direction of the running game in order to try and catch them
(McMichael 1999). The actions of the first group seem senseless with regard to the object
(motive) of hunting for food, but when analysing the activity of the first group in the collective
activity of hunting one gains a better understanding of how their actions lead them towards their
object (McMichael 1999). Leontiev went on to expand on Vygotsky’s model to include this
division of labour (Hardman and Amory 2015). He placed a hierarchical structure of activity in
the centre of the model (Hardman and Amory 2015) (see Figure 2). At the lowest level of the
hierarchy was the automatic operations that subjects performed with the tools under thee given
conditions. The middle/second layer of the hierarchy was the actions that the individual
performed to reach that individual’s goal (Hardman and Amory 2015). Finally, at the top layer
was the collective activity that involved all the individual actions towards the collective
activity’s motive/object (Hardman and Amory 2015).

Figure 2: Leontiev’s three-sage model of activity (Hardman and Amory 2015)

THIRD GENERATION ACTIVITY THEORY

While Leontiev’s inclusion of the division of labour developed Vygotsky’s essentially
individualistic model of psychological functioning, it couldn’t be used to explain the role of
context and the surrounding community in the process of transformation from individual action
to collective activity and exactly how the division of labour impact individual action in
collective activity (Hardman 2008). Yrjö Engeström further developed Vygotsky and
Leontiev’s work to account for the lack of contextual understanding presented in their models

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(Hardman 2010). In Figure 3 (Hardman and Amory 2015), we see how Engeström used
Vygotsky’s model as the apex of his triangular system where the subject acts on the object to
transform it and the subject’s actions is mediated by some cultural tool. Engeström included
Leontiev’s concept of division of labour, but also included rules and the community as part of
the model (Hardman 2008). The bottom left inner triangle shows how rules mediate the
interactions between the subject and the community and in the bottom right of the triangle we
see how the division of labour mediates between the community and the object. In Figure 3,
Engeström has thus provided the basic unit of CHAT analysis, an activity system, which situates
the activity within the context of the power structures, rules and community that is in the
background of the activity (Hardman and Amory 2015). Thus, illustrating Leontiev’s
suggestion that activities need to be understood within their socio-cultural contexts and cannot
be fully understood through observations of individual action or collective activity alone
(Hardman and Amory 2015).

Figure 3: Engeström’s conceptualization of an activity system (Hardman and Amory 2015)

This model is further developed into Figure 4 (Engeström 2001), where Engeström proposed
that “a collective, artefact-mediated and object-oriented activity system, seen in its network
relations to other activity systems, is taken as the prime unit of analysis” (Engeström 2001,
137). This means that the model now includes at least two activity systems with a shared object
as the prime unit of analysis. This change came in response to a number of factors. Firstly, the
idea that internal contradictions, or double binds, within activity systems drive transformation
and change within that activity system meaning that comparing two activity systems working
on the same object illuminated the contradictions between and within these activity systems
(Engeström 2001). Secondly, the single activity system model is insensitive to cultural diversity
and therefore, the model had to be adapted to be able to account for and represent multiple
perspectives, traditions and interests (Engeström 2001). While multivoicedness is a source of
conflict, it also drives innovation, demanding actions and negotiations and having multiple

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activity systems connected together in network multiplies multivoicedness (Engeström 2001).

This model with at least two activity systems working on a shared object as its prime unit is
referred to as Third Generation Activity Theory (3GAT).

Figure 4: Two interacting systems as a minimum model for third generation activity theory (Engeström
2001)

FOURTH GENERATION ACTIVITY THEORY

Following the rise of the network society and knowledge society as described by Manuel
Castells, activity theory is being reshaped again towards a Fourth Generation Activity Theory
(Spinuzzi 2014). This is to accommodate the new types of collaborative activities that
technological advances have enable, where collaboration happens not only within activity
systems and within activity networks, but also across multiple networks of activity systems
(Spinuzzi 2014). This means that no changes are made to Engeström’s model of activity theory,
however, new concepts and models had to be introduced to describe the way collaborators come
together across networks of activity systems.

Figure 5: Large Runaway Object and Activity Systems (Engeström 2009)

The first concept is the runaway object which is usually an overarching, large, global objective
that many activity networks are situated within as per Figure 5 (Engeström 2009). Even though
these types of objects are usually contested and receive lots of opposition, they can also be very

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emancipatory and can open up new possibilities of development (Engeström 2009). Spinuzzi
states that “the more activities are brought to bear on an object, the more fragmented, fractional,
and contested it becomes” (Spinuzzi 2011). Therefore, the objects are always shifting and
changing and therefore, the activity systems themselves will change as they are object-
orientated (Spinuzzi 2011).
The second new concept called “knotworking” was introduced to describe the way subject
collaborates across different activity systems. The term “knotworking” refers to how threads
from different activity systems tie together temporarily and then untie again once the need for
collaboration does not exist anymore (Kangasoja 2002). This is opposed to networks where the
link between systems are more robust, defined and permanent. In “knotworking”, there is no
central individual, organization or authority and the collaboration takes place without
predetermined rules (Kangasoja 2002; Engeström 2006).
The third concept introduced was mycorrhizae, which are the subjects or actors in large
runaway objects (Engeström 2006). In Biology, mycorrhizae are symbiotic relationships that
from between fungi and plants (Engeström 2006). The fungus cannot provide food for itself
and has to rely on the environment for nutrients (Engeström 2006). The plant, on the other hand,
produces its own food but its roots aren’t as effective at retrieving water from the soils
(Engeström 2006). The relationship between fungus and plants exists when the fungus breaks
into the root of the plant to retrieve food from the plants roots (Engeström 2006). In return, the
fungus, which has a much bigger surface area and is therefore much better equipped to retrieve
water from the soil, provides the plant with water by giving water to the plants roots (Engeström
2006). This combination of fungus and plant is called “mycorrhizae” or fungal roots. From
these roots, both plants and mushrooms grow, which are visible, vertical, reproductive
organisms as opposed to the invisible underground horizontal fungal root structures (Engeström
2006). Engeström uses the biological concept of mycorrhizae as a metaphoric description of
the new types of connections that are forming between people and organizations which are the
actors in activity system (Engeström 2006). If we use this metaphor, we can conceive of the
mushrooms and plants as the informal and formal bodies and vertical structures of people and
institutions and the mycorrhizae beneath the ground as the informal and formal connections
between them (Engeström 2006). Studying these mycorrhizal connections are difficult because
these connections are unbounded and invisible and therefore are difficult to contain (Engeström
2006). However, the visible structures are still agents in the activity systems that they occupy
and understanding those activity systems are crucial to understand these knotworking
mycorrhizae (Engeström 2006).
These new concepts that allow us to study more collective and collaborative work across

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activity systems is referred to as Fourth Generation Activity Theory (4GAT) (Spinuzzi 2014).

FRAMING THE RMF MOVEMENT AS AN ACTIVITY THEORY PROBLEM

Learning on Social Media during RMF as a Technology-Mediated Activity System

To apply 3GAT to our learning problem, viz. the use of social media to disrupt division of
labour and give voice to students, we first need a theory that explains the learning that takes
place when learning with technology. In 2005, Sharples, Taylor and Vavoula set out to “to offer
an initial framework for theorising about mobile learning, to complement theories of infant,
classroom, workplace and informal learning” (Sharples et al. 2005, 1). Their goal was to
distinguish mobile learning from traditional learning. The theory of mobile learning needed to
consider the fact that the learners are mobile; the fact that a considerable amount of learning
takes place outside of the classroom; they had to consider what are the contemporary successful
practices that enable successful learning and they had to consider the fact that learning with
personal and shared technology is a ubiquitous process (Sharples et al. 2005). The
contemporary successful practices that enabled successful learning were learner centred,
knowledge centred, assessment centred and community centred (Sharples et al. 2005). These
factors of the successful practices, except for assessment-centeredness, are all afforded through
social media discussions, were social media users construct knowledge through their
interactions with others in their online communities.
Sharples et al. concluded that there were certain aspects of learning with mobile
technology that distinguished it from traditional learning (Sharples et al. 2005). Firstly, they
found that the learner, rather than the technology was mobile and that users were
“opportunistically appropriating” all sorts of technologies as they move from context to context
(Sharples et al. 2005, 4). Secondly, they found that “learning is interwoven with other activities
as part of everyday life”, which meant that learning couldn’t be separated from other daily
activities, such as social conversations, watching television, reading, etc., and these activities
could all be resources for learning (Sharples et al. 2005). Thirdly, they found that learning can
help students discover and realise their goals, which could be determined by fulfilling a
curriculum, determined by their needs, or new goals can arise by learners stumbling on new
information serendipitously or out of curiosity (Sharples et al. 2005). Fourthly, the control over
learning does not rest with the teacher in mobile learning, instead it is distributed between user
(Sharples et al. 2005). Mobile learning can conflict and complement formal learning, has ethical
issues related to the learners’ privacy, due to parents and teachers being able to monitor all of
students’ activity (Sharples et al. 2005). Sharples et al. argue that while many of these are true

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for all types of informal learning “the distinctive aspects of mobile learning are its mobility, the
informally arranged and distributed participants, and the interaction between learning and
portable technology” (Sharples et al. 2005, 4). Therefore, they feel that mobile learning is
significantly different than other types of learning (Sharples et al. 2005). Since, social media
usage, is used in the same mobile manner as mobile learning (with most people using primarily
mobile phones for access to social media, interchanging access with less mobile devices), the
informal learning through social media, is in fact mobile learning and we will use the same
framework that Sharples’ et al. uses to describe their learning.

Figure 6: A framework for analysing mobile learning (Sharples et al. 2005)

Because they believed that learning through mobile technology was a significantly different
process to traditional forms of learning, they thought it was imperative to rework Engeström’s
3GAT model (Sharples et al. 2005). They have developed an analysis of learning as a
conversation, much like the conversations on social media, “drawing on Dewey’s philosophy
of Pragmatic Technology and Pask’s Conversation Theory as foundations on which to build an
account of the process of coming to know in a world mediated by mobile technology” (Sharples
et al. 2005). The reworked activity model therefore separated the technology with semiotics by
including separate layers for each in their activity. Figure 6 (Sharples et al. 2005), shows this
new model.
Analysing the new model, we can see that the semiotic layer, is the same as Engeström’s
expansive learning model, however with the introduction of the technological layer, the bottom

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level or the cultural factors of the Engeström’s triangle need to be adapted to account for both
the technological and the semiotic (Sharples et al. 2005). Sharples et al. introduce three new
concepts which describes the dialectical relationship between the technology and learning
(Sharples et al. 2005). The concept of control was introduced to discuss the interaction between
the learners and the technology, the rights and permissions that are afforded by the technology,
the pace and style of the interaction and the social rules that governs the community that is
interacting online (Sharples et al. 2005). Context was introduced to explain the physical
interaction and access with computers and the community that is accessed through and around
the use of this technology (Sharples et al. 2005). Lastly, communication describes the various
forms and media through which learners can share ideas through technology and the interaction
between these forms of communication and the way the conversation space is shared between
its various participants (Sharples et al. 2005).
Using the framework provided by Sharples, we have constructed an activity system to
describe the use of social media to mediate learning during the RMF protests (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Technology mediated Activity System for Rhodes Must Fall

While all six subcomponents offer us a rich source of insight into social media users’ learning
about Rhodes Must Fall and its related concepts, in this article due to space constraints, we
focus mainly on Social media as a tool and communication.

SOCIAL MEDIA AS A TOOL

In response to marginalisation of certain population groups at Australian universities, Eijkman

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suggests that that Web 2.0 social media can offer HEIs more discursively inclusive spaces
(Eijkman 2009). Eijkman argues that knowledge construction in Web 2.0’s spaces are
democratic and egalitarian, thus it can make the marginalised epistemologies and discourses
more visible (Eijkman 2009). He states that, “Web 2.0’s new mode of socially focused and
egalitarian knowledge production provides a powerful window of opportunity to disrupt
Western epistemic and discursive hegemony and promote more epistemologically and
discursively egalitarian transcultural learning zones” (Eijkman 2009, 240).
Eijkman’s description of social media as a decolonising tool has very important
implications for our activity system (Eijkman 2009). Firstly, Web 2.0 can play an important
role in shifting to a non-foundational approach which is an important precondition for genuine
intercultural learning (Eijkman 2009). This can create inclusive transcultural learning zones
that enhances the participation of nonmainstream students and allows them to participate as
equals (Eijkman 2009). Secondly, the technological shift of universities offers us a new
epistemological paradigm. In this paradigm, Web 2.0 acts a method for decentralisation of
authority and a freedom to reuse and share content (Eijkman 2009, 240). Thirdly, Web 2.0
offers a transparent space in which students and teachers can interact on a level playing field.
Finally, “Web 2.0’s socially driven usages incorporate a different epistemic premise; there is
an acknowledgement that language, thinking, learning, and literacy practices are rooted in the
epistemic patterns of cultural groups, that the perspectives of the marginalised deserve to be
heard, and that epistemic negotiations are an essential prerequisite to respectful egalitarian
dialogue” (Eijkman 2009, 245).

COMMUNICATION AND DIVISION OF LABOUR WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

As argued above, social media as a tool can create egalitarian spaces that can lead to decolonised
spaces of learning. The effect of this on the division of labour is crucial to understanding this
decolonising potential of social media as a mediating learning tool. As Eijkman suggests, Web
2.0 and social media allows for a decentralisation of authority and a freedom to reuse and share
content (Eijkman 2009). This also means that users are free to create and produce their own
content as well. During the protests we have observed users sharing photos, videos and posts
that they have created in order to inform and educate other about the protests. In response to
these posts, users also have commented in opposition and support, in refuting and substantiating
the various beliefs and opinions in the posts. Through these spaces, meaning, new knowledge
and new schemas are being constructed by social media and a greater understanding is gained
about the RMF movement and the need to decolonise our universities. However, what is more
important is that on social media there is no defined role of teacher and learner and in these

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spaces, the teacher-learner binary is destroyed. Therefore, the curricula, knowledge production
and learning is the hands of the individual social media usage and therefore social media
provides a space for learning that is decolonised. Students who felt alienated and voiceless can
be given a voice by leveraging social media to be heard and those who felt marginalised are
now given access to sending and receiving information and are also included in the knowledge
production process. We need to study this power of social media to decolonise learning spaces
to get a better understanding of how HEI’s can leverage social media to empower their students.

RHODES MUST FALL AS A RUNAWAY OBJECT

While Rhodes Must Fall has made waves locally, it has also made waves internationally
affecting universities in the United Kingdom and the United States (Kamanzi 2015; Hlophe
2015). It is evident that the object to decolonise universities is becoming a global object and
therefore a runaway object. Analysing RMF movement as runaway object helps us recognise
that these interactions on social media do not exist in a vacuum but are shared and retweeted
for the world to see and interact on. Therefore, the activity systems that are created through
sharing, reading, and posting are intertwined with one another and cannot be separated. What
we see is these threads of online learning, informing, and organising activities all being
knotworked with threads of protest, political and policy-making activities. It is important to
note that the objects of these smaller activities are sub-objects of the greater Rhodes Must Fall
runaway object and that their objects influence each other. Understanding this helps us to
recognise that no individual’s or organisation’s social media usage can be studied in isolation,
but rather that it is the mycorrhizal activity of both formal and informal institutions, offices and
officers that will eventually achieve the goal of decolonising our universities. However, it is
evident that social media as a tool has an important role to play in many of these sub-activities
and even in mycorrhizae-making and knotworking activities and understanding its role will
better leverage a collective effort of equal and inclusive participation to decolonise our
universities and provide better learning experience for all students.

CONCLUSION
Cultural Historical Activity Theory provides us with a rich arsenal of concepts and models to
explore the role that social media can play in decolonising South Africa’s universities. Social
media itself as a tool, provides us with an egalitarian space for transcultural learning which is
an important step for understanding the multiple perspectives around decolonising South
African universities. Social media destroys the traditional teacher/learner binary, which gives
each student/user an equal opportunity to produce knowledge, learn and expose other users and

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learners to new and different epistemologies and experiences that they may not be exposed to
without this medium. The ability for multiple epistemologies to exist within the social media
learning spaces might give us further insight for how this can be made possible in formal
courses at our universities. Universities have been making efforts to decolonise and transform
their curricula and teaching practices and further research into social media might provide us
valuable insight into how this can be achieved. The students have chosen social media for a
reason, it is time that we explore their social media usage more deeply so that we can better
understand how to decolonise our universities.

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