When the #RhodesMustFall (#RMF) movement erupted at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in March 2015, it not only sparked the proliferation of student movements across South Africa, but also led to the formation of #RMF at the University of Oxford and similar movements at universities in the United States. By drawing on ninety-eight interviews with various actors involved in both movements, Ahmed’s empirical research contributes to the limited academic literature on the connections between the #RMF movements in Cape Town and in Oxford. The example of the #RMF movement in Cape Town inspired the #RMF Oxford movement to challenge the epistemic architecture of the University of Oxford.

This article argues that while immigration exclusions of those considered undesirable were clearly set out by legislation, the subjectivity of the immigration officer was an important aspect of implementation. Drawing on the diaries and personal letters of the officer based at Cape Town, the article focuses on his emotions as he went about his daily life and moved between different intimate city spaces – home, church, docks and office. Bringing together his social world with his world of work, the article argues that what the immigration officer considered desirable in his personal life influenced how he conducted his work at the port.

Analysing the practice of pension sharing, this article looks at social and cultural dimensions of ageing in an urban African residential area, Cape Town's Khayelitsha. First, the paper discusses pension sharing as a future-oriented security strategy. Many older Africans in Khayelitsha believe that if they do not share their pensions with their kin, they do not have much chance of being helped in times of need. Pension sharing as an instrumental act is rooted in the perceived underdevelopment of the state social security system on the one hand, and in the very character of African kinship and the fluidity of today's urban domestic units on the other. Partly triggered by poverty and mass unemployment, African pensioners are under severe normative pressure to share their grants within their families. Taking into account African notions of old age and of personhood, and considering the widespread devaluation of older Africans in social constructions, pension sharing provides older Africans with an (easily available) means by which they can earn (self-)respect. Further, state policies indirectly enhance the normative pressure on pensioners to share their old-age pensions. On a symbolic plane the practice may be construed as a political model that conceptualises duty as the inner bond of the social world. In conclusion, it is propounded that the concept of (intergenerational) reciprocity is inadequate to account for pension sharing or practical provision of old-age care.