The accounting student who sustained a serious eye injury after the police fired rubber bullets at students last week, spoke out about his ordeal and his intentions to pursue the matter further.
Still suffering from shock, Sammy Mamabolo said that since the incident he has been unable to look at himself in the mirror and added that he was not yet ready to see his face. “My eyeball is a bit damaged, the nerves are fine but my eye socket is fractured and the doctors are still trying to figure out what to do next,” he explained.
As the sound of stun grenades and rubber bullets rang in the air on 28 July in Braamfontein, Mamabolo ran blindly, unaware that he had been hit in the face by a rubber bullet.
“I remember that we were singing protest songs as we were coming down Nelson Mandela Bridge. All of a sudden the police started shooting. I started running. I was not even aware that I had been shot until someone said, ‘Hey, you have been hit’,” Mamabolo said.
Speaking from his hospital bed at the Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital, he pointed out that he is seriously considering suing the police for their actions as the group he was protesting with, was not violent and had not vandalised any property.
“It happened as we neared the CEO Sleepout on Mandela Bridge – that was when the police started shooting at us. The police must account for their actions. We were exercising our right to protest when they just started shooting at us and now I am sitting in a hospital bed with serious injuries to my eye,” he lamented.
Northcliff Melville Times previously reported that the students were protesting against high accommodation costs at the off-campus student residences, South Point.
A visibly upset Mamabola said for every day that he has to sit in the hospital, it is a day lost, as he was getting behind on his school work. “I have a test in two weeks time but it looks like I won’t write it as the doctors have told me not to strain my one good eye, so I can’t even study,” he said.
Mamabolo said his parents were also shocked by the shooting but had urged him to accept what has happened.
Questions were sent to Captain Tsekiso Mofokeng of the Gauteng Provincial Police and to South Point Management. We will update our story as soon as we receive answers from them.
Details: Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital, 011 488 4911
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