Student crime fears need urgent addressing

THE accommodation situation at the University of Zululand’s KwaDlangezwa campus needs to be rectified soon, and permanently.

Not for the first time, students have been subjected to invasions at their off-campus lodging by marauding bands of brazen criminal thugs, the so-called amadabuka.

Students, especially females, were terrorised both physically and emotionally, attacked and forced to flee to safety. There were also reports of gunfire.

Laptops and cellphones were stolen from the victims, many of whom are receiving counselling as they fear being raped and beaten.

Their unhappy situation rubs off on other students, whose sympathetic response was predictable as they resorted to the burning of tyres at the university to draw attention to a serious matter that first manifested in 2020.

Fortunately, the trail of destruction wrought by the protesters has thus far not reached the devastating proportions of previous years, but there is every chance of escalation unless the police and campus security personnel can work together to arrest those responsible.

This is, of course, not the only issue irking students.

At the same time, there was strike action at the Richteck TVET campus, also over long-standing matters that require resolution.

The NSFAS debacle, for example, continues to be a bone of contention and the last thing anybody needs is for classes to be discontinued at any campus.

There is also the possibility that some students might exceed the boundaries of acceptable protest and resort to committing crimes such as arson.

One cannot condone their unlawful actions, but one can understand their frustration.

They deserve better treatment and should not have had to resort to extreme measures to get their problems addressed, and perhaps end up with criminal records.

This time around, however, there is an added ingredient to a situation that is always on the brink of boiling over – and that is the pending national elections.

Without a doubt, there are those who will exploit the student unhappiness and take emotional advantage of their vulnerability; perhaps even escalating the unrest through their rhetoric.

By ‘befriending’ them and promising to champion their cause, they may be simply conjuring up votes by a show of solidarity.

Be that as it may, there is also no value in the university leadership turning a blind eye to the state of affairs or making empty promises, which will further infuriate the students.

The particular root of the current unrest at KwaDlangezwa is crime.

The amadabuka gang must be hunted down and rounded up before lives are lost through action or reaction.