It was a perfectly normal lecture until Daniel Zikalala fell through the ceiling. But then, people who know Vista know it as the university where almost anything can happen. And after Zikalala had picked himself up off the floor and walked quietly out of the lecture room, class went on.
The incident has become legendary on the Soweto campus — and since then no-one has been able to ignore the latest acronym among the student body: Nalav, otherwise known as the Night Academic Lodgers’ Association of
There are currently at least 20 students who sleep on Vista’s Soweto campus — which, like the other Vista campuses, has no student hostels. The “night academic lodgers” endure cramped and squalid living conditions, but have chosen to study and sleep on campus rather than put up with equally cramped and expensive township
The most well-established dormitories are between the ceiling of the lecture rooms and the roof, which explains Zikalala’s plunge when he trod on a weak spot in the ceiling.
Next to each lecture room there’s a narrow passage which is used to gain access to the roof. With the addition of an electric hotplate, this space serves as a kitchen and lounge for the lodgers. From the passage, a submarine-style ladder goes up to an overhead trap door, which leads to the “bedroom” under the roof. Here the students sleep in shifts, whenever there’s space on the mattress on the floor.
First-year student Welile Ndawo, 20, came from Newcastle in KwaZulu/Natal to study at the campus. When he arrived he stayed with relatives in Soweto, but had trouble paying the rent they charged, and found it difficult to study in the cramped house.
Coming to stay on campus was clearly the lesser of two
“We face some problems,” he says calmly. “The technical services department where we wash is often locked, or the geysers are switched off. And they are threatening to throw us out.”
So far the students have managed to resist eviction, thanks to the state of quiet anarchy on the campus, where no-one is entirely sure who is in charge. But they are still blamed whenever incidents of theft or vandalism occur on campus, they complain.
Enoch Malinge, 21, is one of the most long-established lodgers, having moved in a year ago.
The condititions at home were unconducive to studying,” he says. “It was noisy, and we were 10 people in a four-room house.”
The relative quiet of campus means that the number of lodgers increases dramatically during exams. Regular Nalav members boast that they are the top academic achievers on campus. To prove it, they have an “honours board” in one of the passages which they occupy. Here they paste up marked test papers in which their members have achieved distinctions.