Bongani Majola
Students are questioning the results of last week’s University of the Witwatersrand Student Representative Council (SRC) elections in which the Independent Students’ Alliance (ISA) won a landslide victory.
The ISA captured all 15 seats in the student governing body, leaving other tickets including the South African Students’ Congress (Sasco) without representation.
The outcome is a serious indictment of Sasco, which has traditionally dominated student politics, not only at Wits but nationally as well.
Of the 10 groups that contested the Wits elections, Sasco achieved the worst results.
The problem is bigger than student political apathy. Of a total of 19218 students eligible to vote, only 3797 made their mark on the ballot paper and they displayed no confidence in what is left of the politics of the left.
“The problem,” says a student, “is that Sasco continues to carry the stigma of corruption on campus. And in their campaigning they don’t address distinctly student issues. They lecture us on political consciousness but there is no evidence of anything they do for students.”
Another student feels Sasco was too partisan and symbolised the African National Congress on campus.
“We are disillusioned with all the political parties of the country at the moment,” he says.
Sasco had the longest manifesto during the election campaign but it did not win it support.
The ISA’s John Kuhn, vice-president of the newly elected SRC, says: “Our detractors assured us that we were a flash in the pan, but we have proven ourselves as the new force in student governance.”
Last year Sasco also failed to win the majority seats on the SRC and with the ANC Youth League demanded an investigation into election procedures. But Professor Tshepo Mosikatsana’s inquiry certified the elections as having been free and fair.
This year Sasco is not formally contesting the reliability of the electoral process, but two candidates who stood under the Unity in diVarsity banner are saying there were problems.
Talitha Taukobong and Nqobile Zitha have questioned the electoral process from the beginning, especially the use of the Wits student identification system used to monitor voting.
They drew the Gauteng office of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) into the fray.
The IEC had agreed in principle to facilitate the elections free of charge, but a day before the elections withdrew the offer citing “time limitations as well as significant differences of opinion between major stakeholders on the whole electoral process”.
Zitha and Taukobong, who have subsequently been joined by other dissatisfied groups, including Sasco, claim they have proof that students could have voted twice.