From protest to policy — how to prepare student leaders for governance roles

Leadership development begins in childhood and is either matured or sabotaged in early adulthood. What surfaces later in public life is merely the ripple effect of how young leaders were shaped, or not shaped, in those formative years. The impact is seen in everything from government, to corporates and civil society formations. Nowhere is this more evident than in the corridors of tertiary institutions, where student leaders often find themselves catapulted from protest to policy proponents without a roadmap.

South Africa’s Higher Education Act affirms the importance of the student voice, through the establishment of student representative councils. These structures are meant to form part of university governance, giving legitimacy to student participation and co-ownership of institutional decisions. However, a troubling paradox lies hidden in plain sight. The students who are elected to lead are often those who have risen through the fiery furnace of very essential campus activism. They are politicised, energised and popular – but are they prepared to govern?

That is the dilemma. Passion without preparation. Power without posture. Protest without bureaucratic policy insight.

Student organisations across campuses – whether aligned to Sasco, Pasma, Daso, the EFFSC or others – reflect our nation’s fractured political landscape. Their members fight hard for electoral visibility. But when the protests are over, when the slogans fade and the victory photos are taken, what follows is an often painful transition – moving overnight from activist to structural representative. And too often, it fails.

Students find themselves suddenly required to operate in the very spaces they previously vilified. Instead of megaphones and placards, they now face committee rooms, university statutes and boardroom coffee. As one student leader admitted during a capacity-building session: “You sit there drinking coffee with management, and you’ve got a lump in your throat because you know your people outside don’t trust this table.”

This isn’t just political tension. It’s a deep psychological rupture – one not confined to student leadership but familiar in many transitions of power. It shows up when trade unionists ascend to corporate boards. When activists become ministers. When freedom fighters become cabinet politicians. This is possibly the case also when a country moves from revolutionary struggle to diplomatic status at the United Nations. The transition from outsider to insider is complex, and if mishandled, corrosive – both to the soul of the individual and to institutional systems.

The leadership bottleneck becomes clear: student leaders, once driven by mobilisation and moral fire, now face institutional processes they neither understand nor control. Their term of office is punitively short. Their learning curve is steep. The same voices that carried weight on the picket line are now weighed against policy cycles, academic calendars and budget meetings. Decisions on exclusions, accommodation or financial aid don’t move at protest speed. They move at the pace of bureaucracy.

This mismatch between urgency and process often creates a crisis of identity. Many student leaders, untrained in governance and under pressure to remain “relevant”, begin to perform rather than lead. They attend to operational issues – responding to every complaint, attending every event – not because it is strategic, but because it is visible. They believe leadership is about being seen. And being seen means votes.

In the absence of strategic tools, some regress into dangerous patterns. They use the student body as leverage, sometimes impulsively and very often manipulatively. They stage unrest to regain relevance. They conflate outrage with influence. But what began as representation quietly morphs into exploitation.

The consequences can be devastating.

Protests escalate. Trust erodes. Institutional governance becomes fragile. Millions are lost in property damage. Students face disciplinary hearings or arrests. Some drop out. Some are maimed. Many student leaders themselves leave office bitter, disillusioned or psycho-spiritually broken. Their passion was pure, but the system gave them no scaffolding.

But there is another way.

It begins not with slogans or elections, but with structure. With strategy. With formation.

The Early Adulthood Development Foundation (EADF) proposes a new pathway. We propose a reimagined pipeline for student leadership formation. One that prepares the next generation not just to protest, but to govern. Not just to lead a chant, but to lead a council.

The first pivot is this: From performance to formation. Leadership is not a stage. It is a calling which requires self-mastery and not just public appeal. Training must begin before elections and continue long after the term begins. We must invest in deep personal formation, not reactive workshops.

Second: From popularity to credibility. We need leaders who are trusted, not just followed. Who are respected for their integrity, not just their volume. This requires political literacy, strategic maturity and ethical clarity. The student body on campus must stop rewarding visibility without sustainable vision.

And third: From protest to policy. Activism should not die when office begins. It should evolve. Protest must give birth to policy. Student leaders should be equipped to translate the pain they’ve seen into the policies they propose. That means knowing how systems work, how power flows and how decisions are made.

This is where the proposed EADF scaffolds come in. They are simple, but transformative:

• Structured pre-election training to lay the foundation;
• Baseline entry assessments to identify maturity gaps;
• A leadership eligibility pipeline that ensures experience before elevation; and
• Consistent mentorship and coaching throughout the term.

These are not luxuries. They are real necessities, if we are serious about cultivating ethical and effective leadership for the next generation.

From churches and corporates, to governments and NGOs, crisis always mirrors character. The tertiary education sector is not just a space for academic growth. It offers a sacred potential rehearsal environment for public life.

If we form leaders who can stand with conscience and insight in the boardroom, kneel with compassion in their dorm rooms and lead with temperate foresight in protest, then we are not just shaping student politics, we are safeguarding the future of leadership itself. DM

Tebogo Mothibinyane is a student development practitioner. Professor Cecil Bodibe is a clinical psychologist and past DVC student at Unisa. Dr Zolile Mlisana is a paediatrician and past principal of Medunsa.