Fed Up Parents and Students Call for Decisive Action Batandwa Malingo, The New Age, Johannesburg, 27 September 2016 Angry parents and students are calling for decisive action to stop the anarchy that has forced more than 10 universities to close. Universities South Africa CEO Ahmed Bawa said the cost of violent student protests since last year has ballooned to R600m with the latest protests. A final-year Wits University student said he is alarmed at the lack of action from the country's leadership to end the trail of destruction. "Somebody needs to step up and end this chaos. The government and even the president seems reluctant to deal with the few elements holding us all at ransom," the final year who declined to be named said. Wits is on record that only 600 out of its 36000 students are causing disruptions to the academic calendar. Vice-chancellor Adam Habib on ANN7 described his job as the worst in South Africa and expressed shock at the actions of some of the students. "Who gives you the right to violate someone else's right?" Habib asked. UniZulu, University of Limpopo, Tshwane University of Technology, University of Cape Town, Wits, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, North West University (NWU) Vaal Triangle campus, University of Pretoria (UP), Vaal University of Technology, Central University of Technology and Sol Plaatje University are some of the institutions closed until October 10 as students protest for free education. Angry parents and students have voiced their pain at the suspension of academic activities at the universities. "Blocking roads, intimidating and disrupting classes and damaging property, where is the peace there? As much as people have a right to protest, they also have a right not to protest. Protest does not mean force everyone to do as you do. We the parents suffer because it is difficult to put a child through varsity. If my child has to repeat another year, I am the one who has to take care of everything she needs for another year," a parent said. Student residence burnt Yesterday morning the University of Zululand suffered an arson attack which saw three buses, a taxi and five cars set alight. A student residence was burnt at UKZN, two vehicles were set alight at UP, a petrol bomb was found at the NWU's Vaal Triangle campus while three petrol bombs were found at Wits at the weekend. The Higher Education Department revealed that Wits University has also launched an investigation into the death of a worker, who was allegedly attacked earlier this week on campus. Wits has also revealed that it would run a referendum for students to decide whether they want to go back to class by the end of this week. AfriForum Youth at UP yesterday fuelled further tensions when it vowed to fight back against the protesting students as the organisation demands to return to classes. "Afriforum Tuks will over the next couple of days present self-defence training," UP Afriforum Youth coordinator Jaco Grobbelaar said. Wits SRC president Kefentse Mkhari has even called for support to make the country ungovernable but COSATU president Sdumo Dlamini has warned against that. Dlamini also condemned the violence which has marred the protests. [email protected] From: http://tnaepaper.co.za/DRIVE/main%20edition/27092016/epaperpdf/1.pdf __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 14184 (20160927) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/yclsa-eom-forum/002401d21899%247022fdd0%245068f970%24%40com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
