This paper was motivated by student protests at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where the Rhodes Must Fall collective called for the "decolonisation" of the university's curriculum. I deliberately adopt a "decolonial gaze" to re-describe the structural and cultural conditioning of the post-colonial university and the contradictions it sets up for black students. Using Archer's morphogenetic cycle and Bernsteins's pedagogic device I tease out what contestation for control of the curriculum entails, with a particular focus on the Humanities and Social Sciences. I identify three groups of students for whom the situational logic of the post-colonial university offers very different opportunities for agential development and therefore academic success. At the level of pedagogy, I suggest there may be a "collective hermeneutic gap" between some academics and their students. Finally the paper makes some suggestions for what curriculum reform in a post-colonial Humanities and Social Sciences might involve.