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Cape Town - University of Cape Town council chairperson Sipho Pityana has urged protesting students to allow the university to reopen on Monday.
Pityana supported the call for education as a "justiciable socioeconomic right" on Friday, but warned students against wasting their chance to improve their lives.
"I applaud our youth, and students in particular, for reminding us and reminding society in general that our constitutional promise cannot be negotiated away," he said in a statement on the university's website.
"Unlike in the past, no one should risk not completing their education in order to be heard or realise a just and noble cause, as we are talking about. No one should risk criminalisation by engaging in acts of arson, damage to property and violence in exchanges with each other."
He said institutions of higher learning were their institutions, and their inheritance, not those of the colonisers.
"They are ours – we should protect them, defend them and jealously guard them in every legal way we can."
He said there was no justification for compromising the career prospects of students due to start jobs in 2017.
"It cannot be right that any of our students should lose a year of studying."
The university has been on academic shutdown for the past two weeks, with all classes suspended until Monday.
Vice Chancellor Max Price on Wednesday said faculty polls showed approximately 80-90% of the student body wanted to return to class next week.
He also said the academic year could still be completed if classes resumed on either October 3 or 10, but that it would be disastrous if classes remained suspended beyond that.
