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Re-Seeing Shackville: 10 years on
08 May 2026 | Video Production Ruairi Abrahams and Nomfundo Xolo. Photo Ruairi Abrahams..This year marks 10 years since the 2016 #Shackville protests at the University of Cape Town (UCT), a moment that foregrounded urgent questions of student housing, belonging and institutional transformation. To commemorate the anniversary, the Faculty of Humanities launched a Digital Humanities programme that revisits Shackville through immersive augmented and virtual reality installations, opening up new ways of engaging with contested histories on campus.
The programme, which launched on 5 May 2026, includes walkabout sessions running until 29 May 2026. It digitally reinstates the original protest shack and connects it to key symbolic sites across campus, including the Rustenburg Memorial Garden and the Rhodes Plinth.
Through these layered digital interventions, the project invites the UCT community to “re-see” the university as a site where memory, justice and spatial politics continue to intersect in the present.
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