Fort Hare vice-chancellor says violent campus protests were 'sponsored'

“In many respects, this is a losing battle,” sighed Professor Sakhela Buhlungu. Wearing his trademark pageboy cap, he peered over his black-framed glasses.

“It has been a hell of a week,” he said.

The University of Fort Hare vice-chancellor (VC) has an interview with Daily Maverick in between a series of emergency meetings as the university tries to get its academic programme back on track after violent protests last week at its campus in Dikeni (formerly known as Alice).

Buhlungu says he is determined to fight to the end. “I will serve out my contract,” he insisted. “I will wake up every day and do what must be done. But it is now in a different context. We are now not working for renewal; we will have to rebuild, and that is what will occupy us. Also, the fibre of the institution that was torn and destroyed,” he said.

Read more: University of Fort Hare campuses close amid arson and protests as students call for VC’s resignation 

He recounts how students cheered as the staff centre burned.

“To a great extent seeing that … seeing those buildings burnt to the ground immobilised me. I saw it on Wednesday. On Thursday, I was at work. We had a flurry of meetings. It had not sunk in fully.

“On Friday, I was completely immobilised. There was a meeting of the council. I didn’t go. I just couldn’t go. I was going to say and do things that I would later regret,” he said.

“I wasn’t physically sick. But I was sick to my stomach. Emotionally sick. I felt sad that people are being used for this. But the damage has been done,” he said.

“We are a Unesco World Heritage site; some of those buildings are close to the ones burnt. It could have been those buildings that were destroyed. It made me sick that we can throw that away.

Third force

“I am still angry at the politicians. When we did the video, I shared it widely. Showing the destruction. I looked at that and I sent it around. But I felt that the politicians missed a big moment here. Some are trying to rationalise, but they won’t admit that the third force is on the inside. The criminals are amongst the staff and students. Watching those students torch the staff centre and then cheer…,” he trailed off, shaking his head.

“You almost feel like asking: ‘Can’t you see?’ I don’t do this for myself. Can’t they see beyond their immediate political ambitions? Me and a few people I work with, we are literally on our own. We have been dumped and abandoned. Some go even further and try to blame all this nonsense on us,” he said.

“It made me reflect on the nine years at Fort Hare. It made me realise that it is a losing battle. We are surrounded by rot in the country, in its systems and so forth.”

But even in this “losing battle”, Buhungu is determined to fight to the bitter end.

“I am not going anywhere,” he said. “I have a contract with the university, and I am not going until it is done. They are free to start recruiting for a new VC.”

He said the university had received information that there were attempts to stop the release of findings by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) into academic fraud at Fort Hare, and specifically in the cases of 33 high-ranking politicians. “We know there are forces at work trying to stop this,” he said. “It is the outstanding part of the SIU investigation.”

While the first inkling of trouble was in May, more recently, Buhlungu noticed that the campus was “awash with money”.

“Just yesterday, I received information that gallons and gallons of petrol were bought from a certain petrol station — and there is footage. The students were completely oblivious to the cameras,” he said.

He said he believed the protests were meant to result in his removal by the “coalition of the compromised” for several reasons:

• He is pushing ahead with an organisational restructure that would affect the jobs of a senior union member facing disciplinary action for fraud. This person was identified by the SIU.
• There are several ongoing court cases involving murders and fraud on the campus.
• He is leading disciplinary hearings against several staff members who have been flagged by the SIU.
• He has moved against student leadership for gender-based violence, assault and misinforming Parliament in a letter.
• He has started eviction proceedings against a local councillor working from the campus.

Read more: University of Fort Hare VC’s roller-coaster ride for justice in face of murder and criminal syndicates

“You have all of these people with issues ganging up,” he said. “At first, it was not clear to me yet if there is a link with those on trial. I am hearing there is a connection,” he said. “One of the things we have noticed is that the campus suddenly became awash with money.”

Buhlungu said student leaders had told university management they would resolve the situation if they were paid at least R30,000.

‘We warned them’

Buhlungu said the first inkling of trouble was in May.

“There was a protest where students made a fire at the gate. We called the kids’ parents, and we had a chat. We warned them and they apologised. We fined some of them to pay for the damage,” he said.

Shortly afterwards, the university’s rugby players were at a tournament in Pretoria, where they had made it into the final. However, they refused to play, saying they had not received their allowances.

“The team management then said, ‘Fine, we will sort it out, but let’s go home; it is pointless just sitting here.’ The team refused to get into the bus,” he said. “We thought it was an isolated incident, and we dealt with that.

“We called the parents. The Student Representative Council [SRC] wanted to get involved. We said no, it has got nothing to do with you. Then the SRC started getting very strident about all sorts of things, including student accommodation,” he said.

While this was addressed, shortly afterwards, a student fell into a ditch at night and died.

“To this day, it remains unexplained. That ditch has been there since the 1960s. Nobody goes there. Everybody knows it is there, and it is far away from the residences,” he said.

“For some reason, she went there. It was very far from her residence.  There was a dispute when she died. Her parents have now asked the Public Protector to investigate. I have asked the dean of students to explain.”

The SRC got involved.

“They claimed that management doesn’t care and so on. Things were building up to September, which was the end of their term and time to elect a new SRC,” Buhlungu explained.

However, the elections were postponed.

The university council then decided that there was “too much stalling” and ruled that there must be elections. On 18 September, the council asked students to elect an interim SRC.

“The decision to do this did not come from me,” said Buhlungu. “It came from the council, but the outgoing SRC decided to fight this.”

Meanwhile, there were claims that Buhlungu’s new term as VC, decided on earlier by the council, was unlawful. Objections to this included that he was now 65 years old and should retire.

“The truth about my contract is this: I got a contract for the first five years. Then it was decided to give me a second term of three years and seven months to get to my retirement. Then the council took another decision to top up my term to make it around five years. They extended my second term. There is no third term,” he said.

“So on 12 September, which was my 65th birthday, the SRC organised a shutdown. But at this point, it was a very small group.”

Also read: Union urges department to address university worker victimisation, maladministration

He said the taxi industry and local politicians got involved.

“So now it was not only the SRC but also the community. The demand was that 60% of people employed by Fort Hare must come from Alice [now named Dikeni]. They said: ‘We want tenders. People from Alice must get preference.’ You could see then things were going somewhere.

“Then we were told graduation will be disrupted,” he said. However, this didn’t happen.

‘It started small’

“Next, we were told there will be a shutdown on [Monday,] 6 October,” he said. “It started small and then it grew and grew and grew — all thanks to social media.” (It is understood that social media is now blocked on the campus.)

Buhlungu said students used hosepipes and fire extinguishers to chase other students from their rooms.

“The group grew. They first burnt the staff centre around 4pm that day. The sad thing was, when the staff centre was set alight … the police were at the gate, but were waiting for a letter from the university before they agreed to enter.

“I said, ‘Come in, things are hot inside,’ but they insisted,” he said. “That gap of 30 minutes was used to torch the building.

“This triggered mayhem. There was stone-throwing and burning of tyres overnight.” Between Tuesday and Wednesday, several other buildings were burnt.

“We were in a virtual meeting,” Buhlungu said, “when the call came that Alice Campus was burning.

“On Tuesday, the Senate chamber, at the centre of the administration block, was set on fire. That was connected to the Human Resources Department, then also academic administration and exams and all of that. The fire destroyed it,” he said. “The front part of the building still stands, where our offices are.

“Yesterday, the registrar reported that the examination section, the section for degree certificates, academic regalia, the whole lot, some student records gone, HR records gone. Especially the older ones are all gone.

“While that was burning, the protesters burned the clinic. It was brand new. We have just done it up for R50-million. All for the students. All gone.

“After that, a small building in the music department was burnt down. Then they went and torched the office of the dean of students. There are flats upstairs, but only the offices downstairs were destroyed. Then they went to the agriculture building. But this one was torched from above. It is a three-storey building. The core of the fire was at the top. The roof has collapsed. We have just refurbished that building. It had state-of-the-art laboratories.

“They are completely destroyed. There were a lot of gas cylinders in that building,” he said sadly.

“Decades’ worth of plant genomes and practical studies, and research were destroyed. All their experiments were destroyed. These master’s and PhD students in soya science, meat science and research in animal production had all their work destroyed.

“The gate is destroyed; it is only a shell. In East London, the old Education Faculty building was destroyed. They broke the window and tossed in a petrol bomb and burnt it,” he said.

Buhlungu said security guards and police officers were stoned and beaten during the violence.

Some students were arrested after the violent protests.

“But I am not confident that these cases would go anywhere,” said Buhlungu. “Also, they could have arrested more people.

‘People were given instructions’

“We then met the MEC for community safety, Xolile Nqatha, the police and Crime Intelligence. When the Crime Intelligence officer spoke, he made it clear that this thing was sponsored.

“The station commander in Alice said the same thing. He said he asked the taxi drivers in Alice, and they told him they are supporting the students. He said a local politician was reported for supporting the violent protests, and the local municipality said they are distancing themselves from his actions.

“People were given instructions from their political principles to support the protest.

“On Wednesday, the court obtained an order that all students must evacuate the campus. It is so we can have a cooling-down period,” said Buhlungu.

However, an interim court order suspended the evacuation order. Buhlungu said they would return to court to have the interim order annulled, as stability needed to be restored.

He said between 300 and 400 students had defied the order to evacuate.

SRC letter

Odwa Msaro, the secretary-general of the university’s SRC, said in an open letter that students had “witnessed the instability, interference and erosion of trust in governance processes”.

He claimed that the university was undermining the SRC’s “autonomy and legitimacy” and that there was a “concerning state of governance in the institution.

“Our call is not for confrontation, but for accountability, transparency and a return to lawful, democratic governance in line with the university statute, rules and protocols, as well as national law.”

He said their “fundamental bone of contention in this difficult time” was the “constant insistence by management to control and dictate student governance, and the pushback by students against this tendency”.

He said the university council was “dominated by internal members, who, in the main, report to the vice-chancellor.

“It therefore becomes challenging to expect the body to be neutral, credible, and execute its statutory obligations as it has more members who see the VC as their boss than those who do not.”

He said the council did not consult with other statutory bodies, like the SRC, when making decisions and had “elected to run vexatious processes that do not clearly capture the gravity of the matter and implement the relevant consequence management”.

He said the extension of Buhlungu’s contract was done without consulting the Institutional Forum and Senate and that Buhlungu’s suspension of the SRC president “marked an escalation of this instability”.

Buhlungu, however, explained that the SRC president had pleaded guilty to disciplinary charges and was fined R3,000 and ordered to apologise.

Msaro wrote that the Department of Student Affairs was unstable and “headless” as its dean was on “perpetual leave of absence since time immemorial”.

Professor Francis Petersen, the chairperson of the board of directors of Universities South Africa, said that differences of opinion were natural in any organisational setting.

“However, the only legitimate and constructive recourse is peaceful dialogue and principled engagement. Especially within institutions of higher learning, the exchange of ideas must be the cornerstone of leadership and conflict resolution. Violence has no place in our universities,” he said.

“While we all feel the pain of this loss, the consequences of this heinous act will hit the UFH students, alumni, senior management and administrators the hardest. It will take years to recover from this devastation, and therefore, one must ask: who does this atrocious act ultimately benefit?” DM