SRC suspensions

registration fees. That is the commitment that we’re going to follow throughout.” and Prinshof Campus were never directly affected by the student action and at that time the demonstrators had no apparent intention of moving to those campuses.

The conclusion

Although UP has stated that the reasoning for the increase has been communicated to students, UP initially only offered an official explanation via a graphic posted on their Instagram page, which contained minimal detail. This graphic also only followed the decision of the SRC to hold a mass meeting. PDBY reached out to the Director of the Department of Student Affairs, Dr Matete Madiba, to find out when students would have been alerted of the first payment increase, if it had not been for the mass meeting. Dr Madiba responded saying that because UP was still engaging with the 2022 SRC, the communication to students was delayed. Dr Madiba further explained that the first payment increase is more complicated than the reasoning laid out in the graphic. She said that the increase is necessary to allow the university to have sufficient cash flow in the beginning of the year, to assist NSFAS students who do not receive their allowances, amongst other reasons.

However, even if the reasoning behind the increase has been made clear, UP’s initial lack of communication and its subsequent explanations regarding the first payment increase left students confused, frustrated and without clarity. So although the action taken by the students who elected to demonstrate is controversial, it cannot be ignored that the main motivation behind this action was to engage with students in a peaceful manner, to try and get UP management to revisit their decision. At this time, these attempts have been unsuccessful and the action employed on both Hatfield and Groenkloof campus led to the temporary suspension of 7 UP SRC members.

Lalla told PDBY on 26 August “I can assure you. Every presentation that the SRC was at, everything that happened under the banner of the SRC was completely peaceful and it was completely non-violent. There was no property damage, nobody was harmed, nobody was threatened […] in what the SRC was doing.”

On 25 August, UP suspended at least 7 members of the SRC, including the president, Thuto Mashile, and secretary general, Tarik Lalla. In an official statement released on 26 August by SASCO leadership, they stated that “SASCO UP strongly condemns the ‘Vice Chancellor’ of the University Tawana Kupe’s draconian decision to illegally suspend 7 members of the SRC from the University for fighting against the dramatic, drastic, nonsensical, foolish and elitist increment of tuition fees”.

A few hours after the suspension, Lalla told PDBY, “We don’t stop the fight. They can suspend leaders, but they can’t suspend ideas. The fact is that, me, I knew the risks when I signed up for this. But the fact remains, University of Pretoria will decrease, or will not increase, its

PDBY spoke to Rikus Delport, the Director for the Department of Institutional Advancement, about the suspensions. Delport stated that the reason for the suspension could not be shared as disciplinary processes are confidential, but said that “suspensions are based on breaches of the disciplinary code for students. We have said publicly that the University, as a last resort, temporarily suspended the student leaders pending an appeal. At the same time we said that these temporary suspensions will be lifted immediately when the students are apologetic and commit to avoiding all actions that disrupt teaching and learning and all operational activities of the university. Management is always open to constructive and fact based engagement with the SRC on all matters affecting students.”

On 31 August, the suspensions were lifted.