Rogue unit of students and staff behind CPUT violence

The violence and disruption at the Cape University of Technology campuses has been caused by a rogue unit of “naive” students and staff members.

That is the view of the university’s acting vice-chancellor‚ Chris Nhlapo‚ who addressed media at CPUT’s Bellville campus on Thursday on the turmoil that has rocked the institution for months.

Nhlapo said that about 40‚000 staff and students at the university were under attack from a small group of approximately 200 individuals.

“We believe this crisis is being perpetuated by a small militant group of students and insourced staff‚” Nhlapo said.

“But by using sheer intimidatory tactics‚ brute force‚ violence and arson‚ these numbers can swell‚ depending on the incident.

“The protesters are by and large not part of legitimate student structures so are informal student leaders who‚ as a result‚ do not understand or refuse to understand university protocol and procedures and also have not been privy to official institutional forums and committees where many of their alleged grievances are discussed and resolved.”

The university has been the scene of a number of student protests over an array of issues including financial exclusion‚ student accommodation and insourcing of workers.

It has led to incidences of arson and malicious damage to property which resulted in violent clashes between students‚ police and the private security which the university hired to guard its campuses at a cost of nearly R30-million.

“As management‚ no sooner have we settled one concern‚ that protesters will insist is the final and most urgent‚ than another more pressing one raises its head‚” Nhlapo said.

“The damage to property in 2015 and 2016 amounted to R50-million. The total for damages incurred this year is still being tallied.”

But many students believed they were being targeted by the university and were the victims of its “heavy-handed” tactics to quell legitimate protests.

A group of students who led protests said they were “on the run” from the university and police.

They claimed that police were being instructed to arrest certain students even if they had not committed a crime. The students said that they wanted a sitting of a university assembly which would address all of their grievances before the university could start to function normally again.

But Nhlapo believed such a congress would not be useful.

“Let us be clear on the matter of a university assembly. It is management’s view that what the students are in effect calling for is nothing more than a mass meeting‚ the likes of which has been twice agreed to by management in 2016. On both occasions the meetings ended in chaos‚ violence and threats on staff lives. In the current volatile climate it would be irresponsible for us to allow a mass meeting of this nature to go ahead.”

He said that although the current situation at the university was not normal‚ the university was still on track to finish the academic programme on schedule.