Wits hopefuls 'forced' to sleep in toilets

02 February 2015 - 02:06 By Poppy Louw and Shenaaz Jamal
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Students at the Wits University (University of the Witwatersrand) in Braamfontein.
Students at the Wits University (University of the Witwatersrand) in Braamfontein.
Image: Gallo Images/City Press/Yandisa Monakali

Thousands of University of the Witwatersrand students go without accommodation or food at the beginning of the year, claimed student representative council president, Mcebo Dlamini yesterday.

Dlamini said the SRC spent over R10000 on accommodation and food for stranded students in January.

He added that out-of-town students who came to the city to write supplementary exams, as well as students who are appealing their academic exclusion did not normally have accommodation.

Dlamini said: "Our people are living like animals. It gets worse every year."

Dlamini said that through most of January, the SRC had fought a daily battle to find students a place to sleep.

Many desperate students had little other option, claimed Dlamini, but to sleep in university libraries, toilets, offices, clubhouses, and residence rooms under renovation.

Nicholas Mhlabane, a prospective electrical engineering student, travelled over 300km from his Mpumalanga home to Wits.

For the two days before he was provided with temporary accommodation his bed was a chair in a campus restaurant.

Said Mhlabane: "I got cramps, no matter what position I tried to sleep in. But I kept reminding myself to be patient."

He was forced to return home this weekend after being told his on-line application was incorrectly submitted last year.

Mhlabane's matric results were 86% for Maths, 66% for Life Orientation, 75% for SeSwati, 64% for Physical Science, 63% for Agricultural Sciences, and 62% for both Life Sciences and English.

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