Rhodes protest turns violent
Harrowing details of kidnappings, assaults, death threats and violence emerged in an urgent application yesterday by Rhodes University to interdict protesting students.
The university was yesterday granted the urgent high court interdict prohibiting students or anyone else aligned with the current protest from intimidating, assaulting or threatening any member of the university community.
The unusual decision to resort to an urgent interdict followed a morning characterised by angry clashes between police and protesting students, during which several students were arrested.
The university’s top managers – vice-chancellor Dr Sizwe Mabizela, registrar Dr Steven Fourie and finance head Dr Iain L’Ange – gave extraordinary oral evidence of how the protests had led to them fearing for university property and student lives, forcing them to resort to the court.
The Gender Action Project’s Sian Ferguson and two students, Yolanda Dyantyi and Simamkele Heleni, were named as respondents in the application.
An exhausted and clearly dispirited Mabizela told the court he had given up hope of an immediate resolution despite feeling they had come so close to achieving it.
The protests were sparked by the anonymous publication of a list of several names of men students who are alleged to have raped or sexually assaulted women.
There has been no indication of who initially posted the list or who accused the men, but it has resulted in demands for their summary removal from campus and a review of Rhodes’s sexual assault policies.
Most of those named have been forced into hiding.
Mabizela told of how some of the young men named were routed from their residence rooms by mobs, held against their will and humiliated on the basis of the anonymously posted list.
He told of how lectures and tutorials were disrupted and traumatised, and humiliated students flushed from venues.
He told the court in a matter-of-fact way how he himself had been manhandled when he had tried to prevent students from holding someone against his will.
He said his and Fourie’s offices had been thoroughly trashed, gardens had been uprooted, dustbins and pot plants up-ended and broken and staff and students intimidated.
“It’s just a mess, a mess,” he said quietly. “I emphasised time and time again that students had the right to peaceful protest as long as they don’t infringe on the rights of others.”
He said when new names were added to the original list on Tuesday night, a mob of over 200 people had converged on one of the residences, Piet Retief house.
“That was terrible. I lost hope.”
He said he, too, wanted justice for students who had been sexually assaulted, but the university had to follow due process and could not summarily expel students on the basis of a list.
Piet Retief house warden Robert Benyon described how the large group of students had arrived at the residence at midnight on Tuesday and demanded he hand over a student whose name had been added to the list.
The student had already left campus and been placed in a safe house.
Benyon said residence inhabitants had formed a human blockade to prevent access and he said they had been shoved and beaten. He said he had himself been called a rapist and one woman had warned him he should be burnt alive. He said the residence students were severely traumatised by the events and feared for their safety.
Campus Protection Unit head Thurenthiran “Towers” Naidoo testified that they expected busloads of NMMU students to join the protests yesterday evening.
Acting Judge Sadia Jacobs ordered that the students should come to court on May 31 to show why the temporary interdict should not be made final.
The university announced last night that the campus would remain closed until Monday. Spokeswoman Catherin Deiner said this was in recognition of the trauma and strain that students and staff had experienced over the past two days, as a result of the protest action.
All formal teaching and learning (scheduled lectures, tutorials, practicals, tests, essay and assignment submissions and field trips) are suspended until Monday.