By Musa Zondo
Many Durban University of Technology (DUT) students say they’d like to be given a choice of whether to protest or not. The university had to shut down briefly at the start of the year and suspended learning for two days again in May because of repeated disruptions of lectures by masked men in Economic Freedom Fighters shirts. EFFYC would often have physical protest action later in the day and this would be every day over a space of two or more weeks sometimes.
“Though we understand the importance of fighting for the marginalised, the [EFFYC] refuses to see that it is also impeding on our rights by not giving us a choice of whether we want to join their demonstration or not,” Yamkela Madumela who is a student at DUT.
Previously and in the beginning of the first semester, the one of the university’s campuses in Pietermaritzburg saw torching of vehicles during similar protest action. This often leads to staff parking further in when there is protest action now because those disrupting things can turn violent.
Some students say they were manhandled and felt harassed in the ongoing class disruptions. “I got the scare of my life when a masked man started touching my arms and stroking them while telling me that it was not their intention to scare. The manner in which they were treating us was vile,” said Anele Kunene who is a first year student.
Kunene said she dropped her tablet device as well and it broke when she was fleeing to safety and this has resulted in an added cost for her to replace it.
During these disruptions, the university either takes a while to freeze lectures and at times they don’t do it at all. This means that there is an expectation that the students would still submit their academic work or risk failing and thus repeating modules.
While the EFFYC denies any involvement in the disruption of lectures and has repeatedly told Credible Source by DUT Journalism that it cannot confirm any involvement in forcibly removing students from lecture halls, there’s various communique that does the rounds on social media before each disruption and it would be signed by EFFYC.
One recently read that the DUT Durban Branch of EFFYC was calling for the “continuation of demanding allowances but tomorrow we will demonstrate that we mean business!”
The university has extended its academic calendar and removed a period that was meant to grant students a bit of time to study. There were further disruptions by the same EFF red shirts with masked faces even after that announcement.
