Join Digital Humanities’ #Shackville commemoration

Dear colleagues and students

This year marks 10 years since the 2016 #Shackville protests at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

To commemorate this anniversary, the Faculty of Humanities will host a Digital Humanities programme, which will include a launch on 5 May, followed by walkabout sessions until 29 May 2026.

On 5 May, the programme will take place from 16:30–19:30 and will include an address by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: People, Culture and Society, Professor Elelwani Ramugondo.

The programme will feature augmented and virtual reality installations that revisit Shackville in a contemporary context.

Central to this programme is the reinstating of the protest shack – originally erected to highlight student housing challenges – now digitally linked with key symbolic sites on campus, including the Rustenburg Memorial Garden on middle campus and the vacated Rhodes Plinth on upper campus.

By overlaying virtual artworks onto physical landscapes, the anniversary installations explore the potential of technology to extend what are often fleeting moments of political discourse. The programme invites members of the UCT community to “re-see” the campus through a lens shaped by memory and justice, while also prompting critical questions about how power is reconfigured in the digital age.

In doing so, the programme also foregrounds the role of the humanities – and, crucially, digital humanities – in mediating how we remember, interpret and engage with contested histories. Through immersive and interactive forms, it opens up new ways of encountering the past that are at once critical, affective and participatory.

Walkabout sessions will be held from the Rustenburg Memorial Garden to the Plaza on 7 May, 12 May, 14 May, 20 May, 22 May, 26 May and 28 May. These will take place from 12:00–14:00.

Participants are requested to gather at the Rustenburg Memorial Garden at the start of each session, where guided walkabouts will depart and move along the route via the Rhodes Plinth to the Plaza. Each session will be facilitated by trained project guides who will lead the group and support engagement with the AR installations across the sites.

Members of the UCT community are invited to join in this programme of reflection, engagement and dialogue.
For further information, please contact Anselmo Matusse.

• View the programme.
• View the poster.

Communication and Marketing Department