President Cyril Ramaphosa has assured the vice-chancellor of the University of Fort Hare, Prof Sakhela Buhlungu, that the government will not allow the institution and the town in which it is situated to become “a gangster site”.
Ramaphosa met a delegation from Fort Hare at his Cape Town office, De Tuynhuys, on Thursday.
The Fort Hare delegation included Buhlungu, the university’s chancellor, advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza, the deputy chair of council, Siphokazi Koyana, and the deputy vice-chancellor for teaching and learning, Prof Renuka Vithal.
Ramaphosa’s delegation included his spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, as well as higher education minister Blade Nzimande, his adviser Nqaba Nqandela, and the director-general of higher education, Nkosinathi Sishi.
Buhlungu’s meeting with Ramaphosa followed an impassioned plea he made to the president to ensure his safety and that of his staff and students after the assassination of his bodyguard, Mboneli Vesele, on January 6.
Vesele was shot dead about 15m from the gate of the vice-chancellor’s official residence in Alice, Eastern Cape.
The attack was the latest of several incidents at the university, which has been working with the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to clamp down on tender corruption, the suspicious awarding of honours degrees and mismanagement of funds at the institution.
University fleet manager Petrus Roets was killed in a suspected hit last year, shots were fired at Vithal’s official home, with a bullet lodging in her fridge, and a man carrying a gun was captured on CCTV footage climbing over a wall and firing three shots at the entrance to Buhlungu’s house in March last year.
This was followed by a “hit list” containing the names of 16 senior officials, mostly members of the executive management. The most senior ones had an amount of R600,000 written next to their names.
Buhlungu said they were thrilled Ramaphosa “afforded us an opportunity to meet”, adding: “It [the meeting] was a very deliberate call on our part because we were really frustrated by what people [police] in the province were doing. In certain instances, there were deliberate moves to quash our cases.”
He said the appeal to Ramaphosa was, “Mr President, are we safe? Mr President, can you guarantee our safety? That was the main issue that we asked as a delegation.”
“Advocate Ntsebeza went into the real issues. We are feeling unsafe, people are dying and there are no arrests. Cases are getting quashed or killed off and it’s now almost two months since the murder of Mr Vesele and we have not heard anything.”
Buhlungu said Ramaphosa indicated he had received reports from police minister Bheki Cele about the progress of cases.
“We said, ‘Yes, Mr President, we hear, but we will only believe it when we have arrests’.”
He said they were able to appraise Ramaphosa of what they had seen on the ground with regards to the multidisciplinary team established by Cele to closely investigate the pattern of threats on the lives of the staff members of the institution.
All criminal cases from 2017 had been “excavated”.
“We were also able to confirm with the president that certain people whose statements were taken and were of poor quality had been contacted and reinterviewed for proper statements.”
Buhlungu said Ramaphosa was very clear that they will pull out all the stops to ensure that the university and the town does not become “a gangster town and a gangster university”.
“He acknowledged that the main thing is going to be when arrest/s happen. He said definitely there will be arrests in the two cases [Vesele and Roets].”
He said Ramaphosa wanted more up to date information on Vesele’s case and also asked more questions about Roets and when he joined the university.
“We were able to fill him on all the details. We were also able to tell the president that none of our criminal cases from 2017 had gone anywhere.”
He said they also informed Ramaphosa that patrols in Alice, which they were promised by police, only took place for a day and a half.
“We said we are very concerned that those patrols didn’t happen. We also conveyed to the president that we were concerned that some provincial police personnel were being used to harass staff of the university.”
Buhlungu said Vithal was able to narrate her own hair-raising experience about the shooting at her house.
“We are confident that we left the president much better informed and I think he appreciated the meeting just as much as we did.”
He said he and Cele were in constant contact and that he had also allocated a senior general with whom he could communicate about issues of safety.
Said Buhlungu: “If there are no arrests, I am going to phone the president and minister Cele. I am not going to waste time with the people in the local police station.”
Magwenya said the president received a briefing on safety and security matters affecting the higher education sector.
The briefing was conducted by Nzimande, alongside the leadership of the Fort Hare University, which included Buhlungu.
“President Ramaphosa was encouraged by the impetus that has been added to criminal investigations related to the University of Fort Hare. Obviously, more still needs to be done to ensure the protection of staff and students at all tertiary institutions, including Fort Hare.”
He said the president committed to further discussions with the security cluster.
“President Ramaphosa expressed his heartfelt gratitude to Prof Buhlungu, the rest of the leadership of the university and staff for their commitment in fighting against corruption at the institution and for their effort in returning Fort Hare back to its glory days.”
Magwenya said the president “noted with great concern the level of criminality in and around Fort Hare that has led to deaths of personnel and ongoing intimidation of staff”.
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