VANDERBIJLPARK – From clashes with taxi operators, and marshals at the Civic Center taxi rank to a cat and mice uncontrollable situation with Public Order Police inside a close residential area just outside the varsity campus.
These are some of the situations created by the small group of defiant students.
Sedibeng Ster monitored the civic center which was quiet throughout the morning, with many stores closed for business.
When the team passed the taxi rank, a group of taxi marshals with sjamboks were seen beating dozens of pupils wearing EFF t-shirts.
Meanwhile, police worked tirelessly to move out students from hiding with rubber bullets.
A high police visibility was deployed, with the school’s private security company backing up the SAPS officers.
EFFSC President, Commissar Sihle Lonzi said the EFFSC said they are planning on shutting down all universities and TVET colleges.
“All provincial student teams must hand out letters not later than Wednesday, March 15, to all TVET and all universities informing institution about the national shutdown. To recall an incompetent head of state is not a new phenomenal in SA. When they didn’t want former President Jacob Zuma, all university vice-chancellors mobilised us to join a national shutdown calling for Zuma to fall. In the same way they made a call for Zuma to fall, the same should happen for Cyril Ramaphosa,” he said.
Lonzi said the ANC government has failed to plan for and resolve the generational enrolment crisis in SA.
“What angers us the most is that the formal liberation movement now in government has still not addressed these generational problems. Today, 29 years on, we have student sleeping in libraries, lecture halls, and outside the gates of universities,” he said.
“We are a nation in crisis. If the youth of South Africa continue to be silent even when our future is destroyed before our eyes, we may never recover from this heartless and incompetent government,” he said.
Speaking to the paper, a student who refused to be named said “we find it fit to join the demonstration because we are also faced with problems in our universities. The demonstration is purely on raising our dissatisfaction with the government and will bring about change”.
