WATCH: Prayerful start to #KZNFMF march

WHILE social media created much hype and fear ahead of this morning’s student march to Durban’s City Hall under the KZN #FeesMustFall banner, local clergy prayed for students as well as hundreds of police officers who were stationed outside Curries Fountain on Tuesday morning.

Ahead of the march, the group of Durban clergy members from various churches prayed for students, police and a peaceful march. Methodist Bishop Michael Vorster told Berea Mail after the prayer, “Our presence today as the church is to be alongside those who struggle for justice and peace. The #FeesMustFall movement has highlighted the economic disparities in our country.

“I do believe free education is possible, it requires both economic and political will. This is a legal march and we have a friendly relationship with police and have prayed for police, the students and that the march is peaceful. We expect it to be lively and energetic. We held a prayer vigil with at least 1000 students on Monday night and are confident they were unified in keeping the march peaceful to get their message across,” he said.

With a very slow start to the march, student activist Nompilo Mkhize, who is part of the group of students representing KwaZulu-Natal universities who embarked on the mass KZN #FeesMustFall march told Berea Mail that students felt intimidated after being met with brutality, victimisation and extreme violence.

As people gathered for the march this morning, students from DUT’s Ritson Road Campus watched and waited for “police numbers to go down.” “There are like two policemen per student, and they are all in combat gear. I do want to go and be part of the march, I have to be part of it,” said one of the many students sitting on the banks of DUT.

Mkhize, who is representing students from the united KZN student body, which included representation from DUT, UKZN, UNIZULU, UNISA, MUT as well as colleges around Durban, said, “We are hoping after today’s peaceful march people will realise students aren’t hooligans and anarchists. We just want to protest peacefully that our struggles are a genuine call and it’s bigger than us for free decolonised education.

“In 2015, the greater student population of this country made the call for Free Decolonial Education. Since then, we have witnessed how this call has fallen on deaf ears. Our call has been met with the victimization and brutalisation of the student population across the country. We have also witnessed how this has been used to criminalise students. The management of educational institutions across the country have actively participated in criminalising students, as we have seen with the countless interdicts, arrests and subsequent criminal charges, suspensions and expulsions that have been meted out against students,” Mkhize said.

The march may have got off to a hesitant start but by noon, thousands of students had joined the peaceful march to City Hall and dispersed after a police spokesman gave them the assurance they would not be shot.