Appeal to stop violent protests at universities
GAUTENG higher education institutions have called on political and civil-society leaders to step up and ensure that the academic year goes ahead without glitches.
At a briefing in Auckland Park, Joburg, yesterday, management of Unisa, the University of Johannesburg (UJ), Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), University of Pretoria, Wits University and the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University said they were worried that if the ongoing fee protests did not stop, the academic year would be severely affected.
Last week, students across the country started fee protests, demanding that the government implement free education in tertiary institutions.
Unisa, Wits and the Univer- sity of Pretoria – which were hit by renewed violent protests last week – have obtained court orders barring students and workers from embarking on violent protests and disrupting registrations.
Yesterday, Wits vice-chancellor Adam Habib said while the issue of free education needed to be discussed, it was not feasible to implement it immediately. He warned of dire consequences if the protests persisted.
“For now, our system is based on fees. If we were suddenly to change to no fees, the entire system would collapse. Universities would close down within months and we would reinforce the very same inequalities of our society,” he said.
“We don’t want to destroy the one higher education system on this continent that is actually working. We have to be mindful that if we are engaged in activism, it has to be thoughtful activism.
“What we can’t do is wipe out all historic debt. That runs into hundreds of millions of rand. Within months the university systems would go into financial crisis and the entire system would implode. We are not in a position to do that.”
In a meeting with student leaders last week, Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande said all National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS)-funded students would have their historic debt paid so they could register for the 2016 academic year.
He noted that the government had allocated R2 billion to NSFAS.
Despite that, some of the student representatives walked out of the meeting with Nzimande.
Habib admitted that one of the biggest hurdles in solving the fee protests was the division among student leaders.
“It is to our benefit that student leaders find a way to determine a leadership that has integrity and that has the support of the broader student body,” he said.
Habib sought to justify why institutions were forced to obtain court interdicts and deploy extra security guards on their campuses to protect their students and property.
His view was backed by UJ vice-chancellor Ihron Rensburg.
“There is a small group among protesters that remain determined to shut down institutions through violent measures. We have seen extensive damage in the case of TUT, where an examination hall was gutted,” he said.
“Some institutions spend between R1.5 million and R2 million on extra security. It’s not sustainable. It cannot happen.
“If we were simply to withdraw the additional security and cancel court orders, we would leave our institutions vulnerable to violence.
“If we could stop this expensive cost of additional security tomorrow, we would do it, but that is subject to these protests being peaceful.”
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