Ft Hare students return to lectures after protests

STUDENTS at the University of Fort Hare returned to class on Tuesday after two weeks of protests against the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) for not paying more than 1 000 students travel and meal allowances.

The protests were also directed at university management for power cuts‚ water outages and poor wifi connectivity in student residences.

Students decided to end the action at a mass meeting on Sunday after a successful meeting between the Student Representative Council (SRC) and university management.

SRC president Mosuli Cwele said: “We agreed on a number of issues and they agreed that they will resolve all the grievances we have raised as students.”

However‚ the boycott continued on Monday because the SRC wanted a written commitment from vice-chancellor Sakhela Buhlungu on their grievances and a timeframe to resolve them.

On Monday night the university management gave a presentation explaining how the issues raised by students would be addressed.

Following the presentation‚ Cwele confirmed that students would begin lectures on Tuesday.

Management agreed to pay outstanding awards; immediate payment to all NSFAS students who had signed loan agreements; work with the SRC to encourage students who had not yet signed the agreements to do so; withdraw private security once campus was calm; build a water reservoir on campus and install two more water pumps; fix a faulty electricity box causing outages; upgrade wifi infrastructure‚ and devise an academic catch-up plan for the two weeks lost.

● This report was originally published GroundUp ( http://www.groundup.org.za ). by