Students attack guard

PROTEST: SECURITY ROOM PETROL-BOMBED DURING UNIVERSITY PROTEST

EFF leaders says anger triggered by attack of another student on campus.

Asecurity guard at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) narrowly escaped death on Wednesday when protesting students threw a petrol bomb into his office.

According to a source in the security company, the students had come from one of the residences chanting struggle songs and carrying sticks and stones.

The students want security improved after a student was attacked in a lecture room.

The source said their controller had told guards at the gates to get inside and lock the gates. The students had stopped at a gate and thrown a petrol bomb into the guard room.

“The security guard who was inside had to escape through a back window,” said the source.

He said other guards, seeing the flames, had rushed to help and police had been called. The police station is about 100m away.

Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader at DUT Jimmy Nkambule said the students’ anger had been triggered by the attack on a student in a lecture room on September 9.

“A first-year industrial engineering student, Sandile Ndlovu, was attacked by unknown men who stormed into a lecture room he was studying in. They seriously injured him before they got away with his laptop and cellphone.

“We are not safe, yet there is a security company given a contract to guard us 24 hours a day,” said Nkambule.

He said students wanted the security guards to be employed by the university and better paid.

DUT spokesperson Alan Khan said management condemned the criminal behaviour, including the use of petrol bombs. “The university advises the student representative council and the protesting students to act within the confines of the law.”

KwaZulu-Natal police spokesperson Captain Nqobile Gwala confirmed nine students were arrested. “A maintenance room and two security guard houses were set alight. A 27-year-old security guard sustained severe injuries and was taken to hospital.”

The students would be charged with attempted murder, malicious damage to property and public violence.