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When a black student threw faeces at a statue of British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, it sparked the formation of #RhodesMustFall, a black radical student movement that sought to address systemic racism at the white liberal university through its demand to decolonize the institution. #RhodesMustFall adopted a decolonial framework centred on Black Consciousness, Pan-Africanism and Black radical feminism, but simultaneously rejected human rights discourses embedded in South Africa’s progressive constitution. This paper examines the arguments developed by #RhodesMustFall in its rejection of human rights, including the idea that human rights is incapable of contemplating the non-human: an entity, often a black body, that takes on human characteristics but is not recognized as human. Drawing on empirical data, including 46 interviews with #RhodesMustFall student activists, this article considers how social movements shape conceptualisations of race in post-apartheid South Africa.