Abstract
This dissertation makes a case for the inclusion and relevance of the student novel genre in post-apartheid literature. I argue that the post-apartheid student novel differs significantly from the Western campus novel, which is mainly concerned with the university as a rite of passage into adulthood. Using Niq Mhlongo’s Dog Eat Dog (2004) and Thando Mgqolozana’s Unimportance (2014), I posit that the post-apartheid student novel emphasises the first-generation black student experience and highlights issues of race and class inequality in and outside the university. The authors’ decision to centre their attention on the student suggests that the student voice is powerful and important in post-apartheid literature, which is interested in representations of contemporary issues which affect the youth. To this end, I argue that these novels represent the university as a space of unbelonging, alienation and disappointment for impoverished black students, who feel the constant threat of academic and financial exclusion. This ongoing sense and threat of exclusion perpetuates the precarity of these students and also enforces the idea that universities in post-apartheid South Africa are untransformed spaces reserved exclusively for those who can afford them. Additionally, the dissertation will explore the ways in which the university space functions in the novels under study as a microcosm of post-apartheid society subsequent to the transition to democracy. Ultimately, the dissertation will show that these novels are significant to our understanding of the black student experience in post-apartheid universities, which has, in the past few years, come into the spotlight by way of the #RhodesMustFall (#RMF) and #FeesMustFall (#FMF) movements, which resulted in the shutdown of South African universities in 2015 and 2016.