Mukoni T Ratshitanga
Vista University was plunged into crisis this week as students continued a boycott of their mid-year examinations while management reacted by shutting several of the campuses.
Two weeks ago students demanded that the examinations scheduled to have begun last Monday be delayed by a week, saying they were unprepared and the timetable was “congested”.
“We were expected to write between two and three papers a day. If not, some students were to write four days in succession. Vista is not a residential institution and we are saying issues like transport must be taken into account,” says Soweto Student Representative Council (SRC) member Max Mothlake. He claims lecturers were not ready to examine students last week.
Management refused to accede to student demands and instead brought in the police to guard exam halls. On Monday, 10 students were injured in a tussle with police at the Mamelodi campus.
Vista’s vice-chancellor, Hue Africa, summarily closed the Sebokeng campus on Monday after students deflated his car’s tyres and damaged its paintwork.
The Soweto campus was “closed to all students until further notice”, although no violent incidents were reported. Campus principal Professor D Rangaka said in a memorandum: “No student is permitted to be on or to get on to campus for whatever reason and under any circumstances whatsoever. All academic, administrative and other activities not involving students will proceed as scheduled.”
But students held a mass meeting in the main hall on Wednesday.
The Bloemfontein and Welkom campuses were also closed and the police brought in. The only campus that went ahead with examinations was in Port Elizabeth. An SRC member who spoke on condition of anonymity said they did not understand the demands of the other campuses: “You cannot all of a sudden say you are not ready for exams when you knew of them throughout the year. It is ridiculous and people are trying to be heroes for nothing.”
But Mothlake says Port Elizabeth “betrayed us because we agreed about this in the national SRC meeting. When they got back to their campus, they had their own arrangement.”
Directors from five Vista campuses last week tried to broker a deal with their SRCs. The agreement – which did not hold – committed the parties to begin examinations on Monday. But on the day the deal was struck, Africa angered students by issuing a circular saying exams would go ahead as scheduled, and warned disruptive students: “Management will have no option but to exercise its fullest authority and apply the laws of the land to the fullest extent possible.”
Management has now scheduled examinations to start next week.