JONATHAN JANSEN | Get your heads out the sand, VCs, and tackle campus violence

The vice-chancellors (VCs) of SA’s 26 public universities are a rather timid lot. Since Adam Habib left Johannesburg’s Wits university and Saleem Badat moved on from Rhodes in Makhanda, higher education has been starved of public intellectual leadership at the top of the academic pyramid. Most of my colleagues keep their heads down out of fear of reprisals or not realising what a powerful platform they have on which to speak truth to power on behalf of the powerless.

So it came as a welcome surprise last week that the leader of the University of the Free State (UFS) said so eloquently what everyone else was thinking but too afraid to say publicly: that the now routinely violent student protests are “opportunistic criminality in the guise of legitimate protest” and that “by letting criminality go unpunished and not speaking out against these acts we are contributing towards a culture of entitlement”. I know some VCs sent private notes of appreciation.

But Prof Francis Petersen had hardly spoken those courageous words than one of the campuses of his university went up in flames; two buildings were damaged to the tune of about R35m. Five of the seven arrested were students. Arson suspected. In-person classes suspended for online instruction. Shock, condemnation and any number of videos available online to “watch” this horrific event until the next fire starts somewhere on a campus near you.

The cycle of events is as horrifying as it is predictable. There are some unpleasant facts to stare in the face, so let’s ask the question: why does on-campus violence persist? There are six main reasons.

One, we fail to distinguish student protests from criminal behaviour. White liberals are the worst, rejoicing in the freedom of students to protest while their own children are comfortably ensconced in online learning and have the means to escape the mess for overseas studies on a UK passport. I meet them at my book launches, a haughty lot who confuse liberty with lawlessness. There is a profound lack of self-awareness when they retreat behind high walls in Camps Bay and Bishopscourt, only to emerge when it is safe for their offspring.

White guilt on the part of leaders (not a single person) meant that time and again criminals were let off the hook when black students (and non-students: it was not a UCT student who punched the UCT vice-chancellor) acted violently.

Two, we find ways of rationalising criminality when it is university students committing the violence. It is what the youth do at this stage of their lives, on university campuses everywhere (this is false). Disruption is a good thing, say others. Some intellectually lazy academics even excuse the criminal violence of students as simply a response to invisible or hidden violence, like having to walk past an image or building bearing the name of a white person. What horrible pain must be inflicted by reading a book by a white author (write your own book, I often tell the suffering ones).

Three, we refuse to take firm action against criminal elements; that, by the way, explains the trajectory of the violence at the University of Cape Town (UCT) from 2015 to 2017. White guilt on the part of leaders (not a single person) meant time and again criminals were let off the hook when black students (and non-students: it was not a UCT student who punched the UCT vice-chancellor) acted violently. And boy, did those criminal elements take advantage of the ambivalence they saw in white leadership when it came to black violence.

Four, as university leaders we hope and pray the violence goes away and reason and persuasion will be enough next time round to bring the more violent students back into negotiations about difficult issues. The problem is the violence has not gone away and it will not go away until institutions take firm and consistent steps against criminals across the 26 public universities. Even when the UFS made available more than R70m (which I know is not money lying around in accounts) while waiting for the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) to become more efficient in its student payouts, buildings are set aflame.

Five, universities refuse to act as one. Many of the past crises have come about because one or another university made concessions on some issue (insourcing, fee waivers and so on) which others could not afford and that set off a series of violent protests across the sector. If University X can do it, then why not University Y? Universities are divided among themselves; university leaders often act only on their own behalf to quell a simmering crisis on home turf without regard for how this will affect other institutions. All the time the students are watching the discord among universities and “play” them off against each other.

Six, we do not recognise that often the most violent perpetrators of campus instabilities are the politically connected. The more outrageous their behaviour inside universities, the more secure their futures on the outside for they often act as proxies for their puppet masters, the political parties. Students are cannon fodder for these political operators, a point I have amply demonstrated in a forthcoming book on chronic instability in universities. Breaking that symbiotic bond is crucial to the future stability of higher education.

Unless and until we face up to the things that sustain violence on our campuses, the problem is not going away any time soon.