Wits students demand university divest from Israel
Students at the University of the Witwatersrand have called on the institution’s management to end its relations with Israel, as students protest at universities around the world in solidarity with Palestine.
On Tuesday, students gathered in front of Wits’s Great Hall to hand over a memorandum of demands.
The demonstration, organised by the university’s Palestine Action Committee and the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC), follows correspondence with the university’s management in November “to which a partial response was given”.
“We are extremely troubled to learn that Wits remains implicated in doing business with Israeli companies, accepting donations from the Israeli embassy and employing a former IDF [Israel Defence Forces] officer as one of the university’s professors,” reads the letter, handed to the dean of student affairs Jerome September.
The letter calls on the university to “lead in using [its] knowledge and influence to advance society by promoting social justice from the Global South”, according to the Wits Strategic Framework.
The students are calling for a full disclosure of the university’s relations with Israeli institutions and companies; a public position in solidarity with Palestine; and an end to what they describe as the censorship and intimidation of pro-palestinian activists and activities on campus.
“We are hopeful that, as the PSC and on behalf of the students, we will get a positive response from Wits on Palestine in the coming days,” said PSC executive Humaaira Mayet.
The university’s SRC has endorsed the memorandum and said it would follow up on the demands with Wits’s council and senate.
“We stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine and many other regions in the world that have been subject to oppression; we will stand by those organisations that are bringing this memorandum to the attention of Wits management,” SRC president Bukisa Boniswa said.
Reena King, of the South African Jews for Palestine, said: “Academics are not speaking up against the genocide in Gaza and it is unacceptable that we have any association with Israel in terms of academic support and academic collaboration.”
The demonstration was attended by faculty staff and students, many of them wearing keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags.
Although the PSC says it will not stage an encampment, as students at universities in America and other countries had done, it has given Wits management seven days to respond to its demands.
“The university can confirm that student groups handed over a memorandum to university executives, [which] will be reviewed, and the university will respond to the students in due course. The event was peaceful,” Wits spokesperson Buhle Zama said.