Letter: Time for UCT to draw line in sand
IN a letter I sent to newspapers last year, I predicted the chaos that would engulf university and technikon campuses this year (“Zuma a symptom of underlying malaise”, December 15). I said that once you gave in to student’s demands for no fee increases, that they would go the whole hog and ask for free education.
What I did not predict was the demand for free fringe benefits. The students are starting now with wanting free accommodation.
Next it will be free food and free transport. After that it will be free wine, free cigarettes and free coupons for attending the various night clubs. Then it will be free sex.
Dr Iqbal Surve, chairman of both Independent Media and Sekunjalo, must be living in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks that the public will open their homes, guest houses and hotels free to these rampaging spoilt brats. He does not open his own house to these students, neither does he give his advertisements or newspapers away free, so why should hotel owners and guest house owners do so when they have bills to pay?
More importantly, South Africa cannot build a sustainable society based on entitlements and instant gratification. History shows that sustainable societies are only constructed on the foundations of sacrifice, hard work, thrift, savings and patience.
I then said drawing a line in the sand would become infinitely more difficult and I can see that UCT was nowhere near to drawing a line in the sand when it allowed students to raid Smuts Hall with impunity and burn its paintings, and allowed the students to construct a shack on the campus. Colonialism, apartheid and racial discrimination did restrict the development of the blacks for the past 300 years, but we cannot keep harping on the past forever.
It is time to move on and construct a new nation. It is obvious that both the government and UCT management are out of their depths on how to manage this crisis. The government is clueless as to what to do as it is clueless about all the other problems facing the country – it’s just all talk and no action.
It is now up to UCT management who are restrained by their collective guilt of being party to past apartheid practices and the law being seemingly too soft on criminal behaviour. Where are the police?
We know that when you phone the police, they will either tell you their van is broken or they will pitch up a week later. If the police cannot protect life and property, then UCT must set up its own security force whose sole purpose is to enforce law and order on the campus.
UCT must drop its collective guilt and take the bull by the horns. It will have the support of the majority of citizens of all races of Cape Town and the country.
Both the constitution and legislation allows the use of justifiable force against people whose intent is to damage property. It won’t be long before people’s lives will also be at stake and even buildings will be burnt down.
Now is the time for UCT management to draw the line in the sand. If they are cowards, then the university council should sack them and put people in charge who are made of sterner stuff.
