Publications
Partners
The vice-chancellor of North-West University said the institution’s Mafikeng Campus would be closed again if students continued their disruptions after the Easter holidays.
“We have made it very clear that, when we come back, there will be no time for any disruptions, not even for a day. Should that happen we will have to close the university for the rest of the semester,” said vice-chancellor Professor Dan Kgwadi.
The university has planned to reopen its doors next week, on Tuesday, March 29.
Student leaders also said they wanted to return to classes.
Suspended student and former student representatives’ council (SRC) president Benz Mabengwane told City Press that the Economic Freedom Fighters on the campus had no plans to disrupt the academic programme.
However, their actions would be determined by management’s response to students’ grievances.
Mabengwane has appealed against his three-year suspension. He said that in the meantime there was nothing preventing him from being on campus.
SA Students’ Congress member and student leader Kgari Bontle said they would try to persuade students to head back to class peacefully.
“The way things are going, we want to go to school, but the constituency [students] aren’t certain that they want to accept the SRC that was imposed on them.”
He pointed out that they were aware of the consequences of protracted protest action, and that’s why they would endeavour to persuade students to go back to class while they met with management.
The Mafikeng Campus lost the entire first term of the 2016 academic year and it could not afford to lose any more teaching time, said Kgwadi.
Violent protests erupted last month when management inaugurated an SRC structure after dissolving the elected one.
Students clashed with private security and two students were shot and wounded when live ammunition was fired. The administration building and science centre were razed by a fire allegedly started by student protesters.
Kgwadi said: “The worst thing we can allow as a university is to compromise quality. You must remember that the university programmes are registered not per campus but for the whole university, and we cannot allow what is happening at Mafikeng to compromise the accreditation status of our degrees across the university ... There is no way we can produce a degree in two weeks.” The other campuses are in Potchefstroom and Vanderbijlpark.
He said history was not repeating itself. The closure and disruptions were not an indictment of his leadership but rather the product of yet another election year.
“This [2016] is also another election year and universities are a microcosm of society; whatever happens in the community, you must expect a replica of that in the university.
“In 2008, Mafikeng Campus went through something similar, which was even worse than now.”
He said the university’s council had done a lot under his leadership to fast-track transformation. It had, within 18 months, come up with a transformation strategy and proposed a management plan to drive that strategy. The council had approved it unanimously, and this was indicative of good leadership, he said.
Kgwadi said that national student unrest was not a crisis because President Jacob Zuma had set up a commission to look into funding for higher education.
He said “the culture in our communities” needed to be addressed. He cited the example of a community about 50km from Mafikeng where “a village was demanding a tar road last year ... and it torched a clinic and schools. Now they have nothing.”
Kgwadi said this was the environment that students came from and therefore institutions needed to address that culture.
Department of higher education and training spokesperson Khaye Nkwanyana said the department would not object to the Mafikeng Campus closing should the university decide to suspend the academic semester.
