UKZN rules consistent with apartheid, says EFF

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has slammed the University of KwaZulu-Natal for its rules that ban ‘free political gatherings’ on its campuses.

In a statement released on Wednesday the party said over the last two days, it had been ‘frustrated, intimidated and suppressed’ by the university’s security.

“The university argued that this is due to the fact that they do not allow political rallies in their campuses. We condemn this as it is consistent with apartheid and fundamentally anti-intellectual,” the party said. 

The EFF has been canvassing in KwaZulu-Natal this week for its fourth anniversary celebrations expected to be held on Saturday.

“A university should be a space of free contestation of ideas. It must embrace and protect itself as an arena of intellectual and robust debate. Any learning without free expression of ideas is pure indoctrination and must be rejected. Thus, UKZN by virtue of banning political gatherings, has essentially banned free expression of ideas,” the party said.

The EFF claimed that students at UKZN were not allowed to gather and exchange political ideas.

“When the students do so, the university surrounds them with men and women of guns; the form of intimidation we saw under apartheid. The EFF will never agree to anyone anywhere in the country to deny us of the freedom of assembly.

“We call on students activists everywhere in South Africa to always be ready to defy any university rules that are inconsistent with our constitution. It is a shame that UKZN managment, in an effort to suppress the #FeesMustFall Movement has elected to do backward and anti-intellectual a strategy employed by inhuman regimes like apartheid, coloniaation and nazism.”