UKZN academic community called to join student protest

UKZN Fees Must Fall students have called on the academic community of UKZN to stand in solidarity with them in their fight against discrimination against black students.

This is the post from their Facebook page.

“To the Academic Community at UKZN
It has been 2 months since we began our #FeesMustFall protest calling for an urgent redress of the inaccessible nature institutions of higher learning, as experienced by black students in particular. We have been frustrated by the relative silence from academics at our university.
During this period we have had to live with the constant sound of stunt grenades and gun shots, we have to breathe teargas every day, suffocating us and security injuring us in our residences and school. However, your silence is louder than the gun shots and exploding stun grenades, louder than insults and threats that are screamed at us by faceless, uniformed men aiming guns at us.
All that the media report is that students are destroying university property and that we disrupt lectures. What is not reported is the way that black students’ bodies are policed and violated. Little is reported of how young black womxn are sexually intimidated and assaulted by security personnel. We are frustrated that you remained you remained quiet, when out bodily integrity was under threat.
As our lecturers we expected you to come to our defence and support, when more than 20 students remained imprisoned for three weeks, without the offer of bail. One of the many arrested young women in prison, is pregnant and yet we saw no action from you who claim to care about our wellbeing. Many students have been injured and others hospitalised, and yet the university report only that we are thugs and criminals. We need your help at every level of our existence on campus.
Our experience of life on campus is one of racial profiling, and the continuing arrest of students for “looking suspicious”. We find campus a violent and traumatic space. As students feel unsafe when leaving our rooms to move about campus for fear of being arrested, and at the same time we fear being inside our rooms for fear of being arrested during midnight raids by police and security services. We have appealed for your help and you have remained quiet.
We have been branded thugs, criminals and arsonists. We, as #FMF and SRC on UKZN Pietermaritzburg campus do not condone or promote arson, nor do we support the destruction of university property. This is not part of our campaign to secure quality free, decolonised education.
However, through the communication we wish to draw your attention to conditions on campus that drive some students to desperate acts of resistance. The brutality and trauma of living daily on this campus is intolerable – just walking across campus is terrifying in a context where you cannot meet, or speak in defiance of management position.
With the court interdict in place, we have been prevented from any way of meeting to discuss this reality, or even a space to pray on campus. As our lecturers and professors you have not offered us a forum to talk about our lived experiences as black students on this campus. Through your silence you have declared it “business as usual”. Your silence legitimises the abuse black bodies have received and continue to receive at UKZN Pietermaritzburg Campus.
How can you turn such a blind eye to the horrible things that happen to your students outside of your very class rooms? Do you switch off because these are not your children? Do you not care because you are not paid to care? Do the financial inequalities experienced by your students and South Africa at large not bother you? By continuing to teach, you maintain a narrative that the current situation is acceptable, that the militarisation of our campus is justifiable, and that a culture of systemic exclusion of young black poor students is morally defensible.
You claim to stand behind a motto that ‘every student matters’ yet our imprisoned students have been allowed to languish in prison with little, to no support from the university. What is really painful is that some of you teach courses on Social Justice, Ethics and claim progressive spaces for philosophy and policy development yet you remain silent about the unethical and unjust conditions and policies used to silence, abuse and suppress student grievances. Only about fifteen out of hundreds of lectures have genuinely put their bodies on the line for students to campaign free quality decolonised afro-centric education. Where are the rest of you?
We call on you as our staff, lecturers and professors to please break your silence. We call on you to no longer turn a blind-eye to the securitization of campus, to please halt teaching and to create spaces for conversation about the violence enacted on black students daily, whether physically, emotionally, or financially.”
The Not-Anonymous, Face-less, Name-less Students.

View scenes from this morning’s protest