Ten years after #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall shook South Africa, The Fall is back on stage, sparking renewed conversations about the movement’s legacy.

As we begin the interview with the play’s producers, there’s a sense of both pride and quiet reckoning. Pride in the impact The Fall has made since its 2016 debut, and reckoning with the haunting echo of the chants that once shook campuses across the country: #FeesMustFall! #RhodesMustFall!

A decade later, those slogans still reverberate — but perhaps now, more like questions than answers.

As The Market Theatre set to commemorate the 10th anniversary of #FeesMustFall with the revival of The Fall, I find myself reflecting on the moment that birthed it. 

The Fall is not just theatre. It never was. It was and remains a living, breathing monument to a moment when young people dared to imagine the impossible — free, decolonised, and quality education for all.

Born out of the 2015/2016 protests by postgraduate drama students from the University of Cape Town (UCT), the play is a raw and unapologetic unpacking of the realities that students faced and still face in the fight for justice.

Ten years on, the producer Kamogelo Ketsia Velaphi tells me, The Fall is ‘a mirror, not only of that moment but of now.” And indeed, it is. It also feels like holding a mirror up to the country. The question isn’t only what happened then, but what are we doing now?

Velaphi explains, “What is powerful about this piece is how relevant it still is, is that we find our examples in real life, in the reality of South African students today – like there were hunger strikes at WITS (University of the Witwatersrand) – there were strikes regarding accommodation, we can see the police fighting with students in the country when they speak up and challenge these things that are very difficult to deal with…”

“We looked at the year and realised that it’s been 10 years, and looked at the current state of student life, and we realised that these are the stories we need to tell, using what happened. Using the last really huge and momentous time when students stood up nationwide…”

The cast, some of whom were in the midst of the movement, are telling the same truths and carry the emotional weight of students who stood against systems that were never designed with them in mind. And the reality remains: Fees haven’t fallen. Not really.

The irony isn’t lost on the creators. That the play is being staged at a time when students across the country are still battling financial exclusion is a painful reminder that activism does not end with victory chants.

It’s the kind of insight that The Fall gently — or sometimes, fiercely — demands of its audience. It asks us to remember the burning tyres, the closed gates, the battered bodies, and the bold voices. But it also asks us to reckon with what has changed since then. For some, the movement was a spark. For others, it was a wound. And for most, it was both.

Perhaps what makes The Fall so enduring is its honesty. It doesn’t romanticise the struggle. It tells of the divisions within the movement — the clash between race and class, the ever-present patriarchy, the discomfort of being ‘woke’ but not always inclusive. It doesn’t shy away from showing us that liberation is messy and imperfect, and that activists, too, are human — tired, angry, hopeful, flawed.

What’s changed in this new iteration of the play, I ask? Velaphi says, “This time, we aren’t just telling the story of what happened, we’re asking why it still matters. And what responsibility we carry now, beyond the protest.”

That hits hard. Because beyond the statues and hashtags, The Fall is about the unfinished business of transformation. It’s about how movements — once urgent and loud — must find a way to grow, to evolve, to be more than reactionary. It’s about the uncomfortable truth that some of our most powerful revolutions haven’t quite finished the work they started.

The Market Theatre’s choice to stage The Fall isn’t just artistic. It’s political. In a city where inequality bleeds into every street corner, where universities still feel like fortresses to so many, telling this story again — now — is an act of remembering, and perhaps, of warning.

Where does The Fall go from here? – I ask Velaphi and with an honest tone, she says, “I would like for this work to not be relevant in the next 5, 10 years. I want it to be something we look at, as something that has happened and we acknowledge, we acknowledge the pains, and we acknowledge the effects of it that still live… But I don’t want it to be something relevant anymore.”

While statues may fall, systems take longer. And the students who once threw their bodies at the gates are now navigating adulthood, still carrying the burden of promises half-kept.

In a sense, the play is something simple, but profound, saying, “We didn’t want to do nostalgia. We wanted to do accountability.” And that, maybe, is the quiet power of The Fall. It doesn’t ask you to clap. It asks you to think. It doesn’t want your sympathy. It wants your attention.

Ten years on, the question remains: if the students fell for us — what are we doing to make sure they don’t fall alone again?

Catch “The Fall” from April 9, 2025 to May 4, 2025 at The Market Theatre, with all Wednesdays at half-price and when tickets are bought for groups of four or more.