Sound & fury 101
A passionate protest is all part of the path to graduation
Wits University’s student representative council (SRC) has called for the Braamfontein campus to be “demilitarised”.
This assumes the campus is currently “militarised”— which it isn’t.
This is what a “militarised campus” would really look like: canary-yellow Casspirs disgorging hundreds of beefy white cops in bulletproof vests and riot helmets, who fire teargas and rubber bullets at the “A luta continua”chanting protesters, surging onto the campus from three directions, cornering the crying students and beating the crap out of them.
Hundreds of those students would then get bundled into the Casspirs (the haul once included the entire university karate team). Some will not be seen again for a very long time.
That isn’t what’s happening now at Wits.
But we can forgive the Wits SRC a bit of hyperbole they are students, after all, and for students the world over, being part of a struggle is a rite of passage. Even if the battle cry “A luta continua” is now as meaningless as it is jaded.
It is true that many students are saddled with the systemic disadvantages of poverty along with a subpar education system that has not prepared them for the rigours of tertiary study.
It is also probable that Wits is in a financial corner as it grapples with unpaid fees and the cost of providing accommodation for thousands of students.
The SRC, whose president, Aphiwe Mnyamana, has been suspended after failing to appear for a disciplinary hearing, has since asked Dali Mpofu for legal help and retained law firm Mabuza Attorneys for all those students who have been suspended.
Meanwhile, the academic year totters on. And it’s barely March.