EFF hit back at ‘kangaroo court’

It was reported on 7 August that about 48 EFF students were arrested after disrupting the university’s studies while staging an illegal protest outside the University of Johannesburg’s Kingsway’s Campus on 6 August.

The 48 students recently appeared in Newlands Magistrates’ Court and their case has been postponed until 28 August.

It now appears that only six among the group were UJ students, the rest came from other local education institutions.

The six are expected to soon join the other five EFF activists who were allegedly identified during the July illegal protest that took place at UJ’s Doornfontein Campus.

These five students were temporarily suspended for allegedly organising, committing violent behaviour and also participating in the illegal Doornfontein demonstration on 21 July. The disciplinary hearing commenced on 6 August.

“We’re not considering the hearing because we know our members are just subjected to a kangaroo court disguised as the institution committee.

All we are trying to do here is to fight for students’ rights,” said the Gauteng EFF spokesperson Ntobeng Ntobeng.

In solidarity with the five suspended students, the university’s media relations coordinator, Herman Esterhuizen, said the EFF Student Command applied at the local government authorities to conduct a march at the UJ’s Auckland Park campus. The turning down of the application triggered more violence on 7 August, when police were called.

The EFF Gauteng has now accused the University of victimising and unfairly treating its members. Ntobeng Ntobeng said they find themselves applying for the protest march and being declined.

“We know this is their apartheid strategy of killing the movement in the institution and is not going to work because we are ready to fight until end.

“This government is clearly provoking us by sending riot police. They know we are taking over all these institutions so they are trying to unstabilise us, systematically targeting all the activists,” said Ntobeng. He highlights that some of the issues they were trying to raise were of the lecturers dating students and the selling of question papers by the authorities and lecturers.

The UJ director of student life and governance Godfrey Helani said the university has initiated a disciplinary process after some students organised and/or participated in an unauthorised demonstration, disrupting academic and administrative activities, and committing or enticing violent behaviour, at the University’s Doornfontein Campus.

“With regard to the protest on 6 August 2015: The University has already started with the investigations,” he said. “The investigations are part of a process of disciplinary action and they include a process of identifying individual students who organised and/or participated in the unauthorised demonstration. About six of UJ students participated.”

He added that the second sitting of the disciplinary will be on 20 August. ” It is unfounded and without substance that the University is targeting EFF activists. An allegation with regard to a leak of a question paper was made and the university initiated a forensic investigation as it deems the allegation in a serious light,” he concluded.