Rape protests ‘vigilantism’

Rhodes students want SCA to rescind interdict

Rhodes University registrar Stephen Fourie has described the #RUreferencelist protests against campus rape and sexual violence that rocked the institution last year as a “vigilante campaign”.

Fourie claims the campaign flushed out male students accused of rape and sexual assault without trial – and in the majority of cases – without evidence.

“That the ‘protest action’ may originally have been directed against an alleged culture of rape and sexual violence against women does not impact upon the fact that it developed into a vigilante campaign,” re ads part of Fourie’s answering affidavit in response to a Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) special appeal by three students.

Fourie said the activities in which the applicants – Sian Ferguson, Yolanda Dyantyi and Simamkele Heleni – admittedly participated strove to “flush out” individuals accused without trial (or in the majority of cases, without evidence) from their university residences and to be abducted and kidnapped and subjected to public humiliation.

Ferguson, Dyantyi and Heleni were interdicted by the Eastern Cape High Court in December from disrupting lectures and tutorials, as well as interfering with anyone’s movement on and off campus.

The three students want the SCA to set aside the interdict as they have raised “legitimate questions” about the university’s response to rape and sexual violence on campus.

In her founding affidavit, Heleni said they were restrained from “unlawful” conduct for which the university blames people who joined the protests, but does not name or join them in the proceedings. She said the university joined them because it considered them to be leaders of the protest.

Heleni complained that Eastern Cape High Court Judge Murray Lowe was holding them liable by association, and that the impact on the exercise of the right to protest will be profound and chilling.

“It will be possible, in future, for anyone who wishes to stifle the expression of a political grievance through protest, to pick up leaders of that protest and hold them liable for anything unlawful done by anyone else in the crowd,” said Heleni.

She insisted that this cannot be law. The #RUreferencelist revealed the identities of male students who had allegedly raped or sexually assaulted their female peers.

Students accused Rhodes University of violently suppressing the protests and turning the campus in Grahamstown into a war-zone by summoning armed police.

Fourie has also asked the SCA to order the three students’ pro bono lawyers, the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of SA, to pay the legal costs out of their own pockets due to universities being under financial pressure, and that “cavalier litigation against them such as in this matter simply increases those pressures”.

‘‘Students say Rhodes violently suppressed the protests