University students in South Africa disenchanted with the lack of economic, racial and cultural transformation sparked country-wide protests in 2015 aimed at rejecting the Rainbow Nation motif that is often used to describe the country. This motif, turned societal narrative, has come to pacify youth activism. As a result, through #hashtag-driven movements, these students have engaged in a form of politics unseen in the country since the end of Apartheid. This chapter discusses how the global financial crisis of 2008 and its adverse effects on youth unemployment and inter-racial inequality created the rationale for emergence of three different social movements have changed youth politics in South Africa.