Negotiations at UJ reach stalemate

Negotiations between University of Johannesburg protesters and management have reached a stalemate.

This after management said it would not meet with protesters until they were shown "respect".

Students and campus workers have been protesting for several days now against outsourcing. Last week, 141 were arrested after protests turned violent.

On Monday, protesters marched to UJ's Kinsgway campus, demanding that Vice Chancellor Ihron Rensburg address them.

But UJ Deputy Vice Chancellor for Strategic Services Mpho Letlape said they would not meet with the protesters until the meeting was called for in an "orderly fashion". She said they had invited students to a meeting on Sunday, but they had refused.

" We have invited them, but the meeting needs to follow the normal UJ processes. It's not like we don't want to meet with the students. They were invited yesterday. Now they are demanding that the vice chancellor meets them. Where is the issue of respect? Yesterday they didn't want to meet, today they make demands,"  she said.

Student leader Mangaliso Mkhonta said, however, that because its president had been suspended, it was loathe to meet with management behind closed doors. Instead, it wanted management to address all students in a public forum.

"The SRC is wounded and limping and does not have the capacity to represent students at large... We are willing to meet in a public space where the general public can be there," said Mkhonta.

Meanwhile, the ANC said it welcomed the decision by the State to withdraw charges against students and workers. It said normality needed to be restored to the institution so the academic programme could resume.

Source News 24