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Pictures of injured students bleeding and chaotic scenes have flooded social media amid unconfirmed allegations that private security officials used live ammunition during a confrontation with students in yet another round of violent protest at the North West University Mafikeng Campus.
A security vehicle was reportedly torched while there were unconfirmed reports of a pregnant student who miscarried on the scene after she was allegedly shot by security officials.
One student leader has described chaotic scenes as a “war zone”, where students were throwing objects at security officials who were shooting at them. A number of vehicles were damaged in the chaos apparently from stones and rubber bullets.
This led to management deciding to “suspend classes until further notice” as running battles between protesters and security officers continued on campus.
According to the university management, a group of students disrupted an inauguration ceremony of the campus’ interim student representative council earlier today. The ceremony followed the dissolution of the old student council which led a number of protests early this year.
“Security had to use tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the students. The situation is still tense but stable,” said university spokesperson Koos Degenaar.
He said management had taken chairpersons of student council substructures and appointed them as the interim student council. Students were not happy with this.
“We can’t have an student council that was elected by management representing students. They will obviously represent no one else’s interests but those of management,” said chairperson of the South African Students Congress on campus, Karabo Kau.
“Today’s protest was due to the unhappiness of the general students population, and for raising their dissatisfaction the response they got rubber bullets and live ammunition. A pregnant lady miscarried right after she was shot and at least 10 students were taken away for medical attention.”
City Press could not verify that live ammunition was used, or that a pregnant student miscarried.
The student council was dissolved last week following the suspension of its president Benz Mabengwane. The latter, who is from the Economic Freedom Fighters, led #FeesMustFall protests and another protest against what he described as the “financial exclusion of poor students”.
An EFF member and spokesperson of the dissolved student council, Rebaone Pudi, said management was “quick to appoint those who will succumb to their demands”.
“They have appointed their own people and they can’t expect them to be acknowledged by students as their leaders and trust them to represent their interests. Management want leaders who can agree to financial exclusion of students and we’re not going to accept that,” Pudi said.
“The university has also been spending money on armed private security while they wanted poor students to go back home. We demand the demilitarisation of our university so we won’t see any more live ammunition being used on students.”
North West police spokesperson Sergeant Kelebogile Moleko said they were still gathering information on what happened at the university.
We are being shot at with live ammunition #DemilitarizeNorthWestUniversity cc: @MinNzimandeDHET pic.twitter.com/JdmHspXaqv
— Kgari Bontle (@KgariBontle) February 24, 2016
