It was the goal of the festival to offer an ideal platform for a review and critical re-assessment of urgent tasks necessary to deepen the technical and intellectual skills needed for training the next cadre of thinkers and practitioners. The festival served as a vehicle for reflection and a springboard for new research efforts to promote Pan-Africanism and structural transformation of the African world.

As long as societies are built on needless greed and exploitation, the seeds of revolution and radical change will always be present - more so in societies where the potential for dissent has not been emasculated by a lifeless, uncritical penchant for “order”, conformism and a culture of silence enforced by the most cynical, most advanced mechanisms and stratagems of power.

Does the gradual increase in the number of offensive strikes starting in 2007, the occurrence of the Marikana Massacre and the farm workers’ revolt of 2012, the five-month platinum strike and the one-month metalworkers’ strike in 2014 indicate that a new wave of offensive strikes has begun? Or is this just a short-lived revival? A key question is: has South Africa reached a turning point?

The South African student #FeesMustFall uprising at its peak has been largely single-issue driven – scrapping of tuition fees - rather than calling for systemic societal, political, social and economic change, and pushing for change of national leadership, as was the case in North Africa.