On Monday one of the 2016 “Fees Must Fall” activists Mcebo Dlamini was found guilty of public violence and contravening South Africa’s immigration laws.
He was sentenced to two-and-a-half years’ imprisonment, which was suspended for five years.
He is one of the many activists during the period who were arrested and charged with public violence while fighting for free education at higher education institutes.
As painful as this might be now that these students gambled with their future and careers, we must also not turn a blind eye to the criminal activities they resorted to in order to achieve this.
Some were seen attacking law enforcement officers with slingshots, obviously with the intent of inflicting harm.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand these students were fighting for a good cause, but the measures they resorted to were unlawful.
It pained me to hear Mcebo speaking outside the court after his sentencing, saying this is the end of his law career.
It pains me that there are many other students who were suspended for a lifetime because of their actions.
This is unfortunate, but we also have to allow the law to take its course no matter who is responsible for the destruction.
Somehow last year when some of these activists were arrested and found guilty, I thought maybe, just maybe the students will learn from this and resort to other measures to be heard, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.
Since the start of the tertiary calendar, we have seen students at University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and The University of the Witwatersrand protesting and torching buildings, demanding their historical student debts be scrapped.
They torched UKZN’s HIV and Aids Support Unit (CHASU) at Howard College and Edgewood Campus, which will cost the university millions to rebuild.
This clearly tells us that these students have learnt nothing from those before them.
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