The Anti-Apartheid Shanty Protest from 1985 to 1987

Undergraduate: Timber Beeninga

Faculty Advisor: Lauren Jarvis
Department: Global Studies

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From 1985 to 1987, American university students built tin, cardboard, and wood shanties on prominent campus spaces to protest university endowment holdings in apartheid South Africa. My research asks the following questions: Why did the shanty protest emerge in this historical moment? What did the shanties offer that other forms of anti-apartheid protest had not? I argue that the events in South Africa in the early 1980s¿¿¿the township uprisings, the state of emergency in 1985, and the overall gross violations of human rights that were well-circulated in the American media¿¿¿were moral shocks to American students. Beyond the emotional response to the reality of apartheid, actions by the Free South Africa Movement in the United States provided students the political opportunity, or leverage, to pressure their own universities by building the shanties. Furthermore, I argue that the shanties' aesthetics, use of public space, and performative elements elevated anti-apartheid protests in ways that previous efforts did not.