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There’s no rainbow nation at University of (un)Free State, say students

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“There is diversity, yes, but no human togetherness … there is no unity.”

These are the words of the student representative council president, Lindokuhle Ntuli, concerning the climate at the University of Free State.

The university has again found itself dealing with racial tension after violence broke out between blacks and whites at a university rugby match on Monday night. The university’s vice-chancellor, Jonathan Jansen, has called it “a setback for transformation”.

The Varsity Cup match between the university team (FNB Shimlas) and a team from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (FNB Madibaz) was disrupted when protesters and students swarmed the field, leading to a massive brawl.

Initial news reports called the disruption by protesters an attempt to disturb the match but students said it was actually an effort to get Jansen’s attention about ending outsourcing at the university.

Ntuli said a letter of demand to end outsourcing and a request to reinstate a student who was unfairly dismissed was sent to Jansen and management but was “ignored”. Jansen, instead, went to watch the match.

Jansen said that the university had been “in constant negotiation with contract workers to provide our colleagues with a decent wage and certain benefits”. At the end of 2015, the minimum wage was raised from R2500 to R5000.

“We were in fact hoping that the continued negotiations would improve that level of compensation even as we looked at a possible plan for insourcing in the future. We made it clear that if we could insource immediately, we would, but that the financial risk to the university was so great that it threatened the jobs of all our staff.

“Those negotiations were going well, until recently, when without notice the workers broke away and decided to protest on and around campus,” said Jansen.

Tango Twasa, a third-year student at UFS, said workers who had been striking against outsourcing were locked out of university premises and their access cards were deactivated.

“Students joined the workers and the university called the cops,” he said.

It was then that they went on to the field to get Jansen’s attention.

The video of the brawl has raised concerns around the disillusion of a rainbow nation and how something like this could happen with the “born free” generation.

Ntuli said it shouldn’t come as a surprise. “It is disappointing, yes, but [they] should have seen it coming.”

Twasa echoed the same sentiments, saying that the issue “has never been addressed and the notion was forced too quickly”.

Jansen condemned the “vicious attacks” on protesters and said an investigation into the events was under way.

News24 reported that Jansen had received death threats and had been accused of placing the interests of certain racial groups first.

“I have been accused of putting black students’ interests above the white students, and I am also accused of putting white students’ interests above blacks. It is all lies, and I think it is the kind of thing people say to unsettle you,” he was reported as saying by News24.

Ntuli believed that the university did not cater for black students and that it was a “hostile” environment.

“[It] protects and privileges white interests … [they] built this university not planning for black students to be here; that’s why its policies are divisive,” he added.

Ntuli said black students needed to identify with the university and it needed to represent the demographics.

“We need to have the same footing [as white students] where no one feels superior or inferior to another.”

*Read Jansen's full statement on the situation here

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