University safety task team established
Vice-chancellors from the country’s 26 universities and PSiRA met to deliberate interventions following the recent spate of violence and murders on and off campus in recent weeks.
POLICE minister Bheki Cele, university vice-chancellors and the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (PSiRA) have established a task team to improve campus safety.
Last week Cele met with vice-chancellors from the country’s 26 universities and PSiRA to deliberate interventions following the recent spate of violence and murders on and off campus in recent weeks. During the meeting, Cele also engaged the vice-chancellors on improving campus safety and new approaches to policing that may facilitate this.
In a joint statement, Cele stressed the importance of students feeling safe and being safe on and off campus.
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“The violence on and off campus extends to more than gender-based violence (GBV). We are now seeing that there are attacks and violence against the overall student community,” read the statement.
The CEO of PSiRA, Manabela Chauke, said all universities must have minimum standards of security and that all security officers deployed on campuses must be vetted and trained specifically for the student environment.
Universities of South Africa CEO, Professor Ahmed Bawa, told the gathering that students must be an integral part of the safety changes they want to see on campuses.
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“We cannot do this alone. We may have the capacity to do some things but we need the buy in from students, the communities around the institutions and the SAPS [SA Police Service], the criminal justice system and other relevant governmental operations. This is an issue that has to be dealt with holistically. It is a social crisis,” said Bawa.
The statement said all parties agreed to establish a working committee that will look at short- and long-term security solutions on and off campuses.
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