Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
CPUT celebrates deal on registration and fees
AS MAYHEM broke out at the University of the Western Cape late yesterday, students of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology were celebrating the announcement of free registration for all students next year.
At UWC, students ransacked the office of their vice-chancellor Professor Tyrone Pretorius and were still marching and chanting at publication time last night.
Several university security guards were injured, one hospitalised, UWC said last night.
Trouble broke out in the midafternoon yesterday when students couldn’t meet Pretorius, but later Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, the university’s chancellor, addressed students, mediating and accepting a memorandum.
The students have given the university until 1pm today to respond.
The protesters, some of whom described themselves as “guerrillas”, have named themselves # UWC FeesWillFall.
The group numbered about 200 yesterday.
The damage at the campus included smashed windows and overturned flower pots.
Student leader Lindokuhle Mandyoli said: “We wanted to mobilise mass action. We went res to res and were blocked by the black ants (security guards).”
They forced their way into Pretorius’s office building after the meeting failed to take place at 1pm. Police arrived at about 2pm.
Another protesting student, Khulah Nyobole, said their demands included free registration next year, no financial exclusion, the clearing of financial debt and the removal of the “Berlin Wall” fence between the university and the Kovacs residence.
Meanwhile, Makgoba attempted to mediate, telling the students that “as a dad and a man” he understood their pain.
Pretorius, in a statement released yesterday, said several UWC security staff were injured, “one so badly that he required hospitalisation”. He also rejected the students’ claim that their protest was a result of the rector not being available to them.
“The evidence is there that they pretended to want to have a dialogue, but when the opportunity was presented to them, they went on a rampage.
“We have deployed a team of counsellors to assist our students in the residences, especially the first years, to help them deal with the trauma they have experienced,” Pretorius said.
Meanwhile, at CPUT yesterday a “marathon meeting” between management and staff, which began on Thursday evening, ended with the announcement of free registration for all students in 2016.
The announcement is included in a two-page resolution signed by university and student leaders.
In a letter to staff and students, CPUT vice- chancellor Dr Prins Nevhutalu said the university, with its 30 000 students, would reopen on Monday. Nevhutalu also confirmed tuition fees would not increase next year.
Residence fees would decrease. No decision has been made on when rescheduled exams would take place.
The university’s senate would likely make this decision after a meeting on Monday.
Sibusiso Thwala, president of the students representative council, called the resolution a “victory for students and the institution”.
Thwala said the resolution stated that the debt of poor students registered at the university would be cleared.
This would not apply to students with bursaries. The details still had to be thrashed out.
In his letter, Nevhutalu wrote that the university was considering “clearing some of the debt which cannot be collected from deserving and indigent students”.
He hoped the decision to waive registration fees, keep fee increases 0 percent and clear debt would “not have a negative impact on the financial sustainability of the institution”.
“We are in discussion with the Department of Higher Education and Training to see how they are going to assist us to meet our