VC Desk: Classes and university operations resume 3 October 2016
Released: 21:30, 2 October 2016
2 October 2016
Dear colleagues and students
I write this evening with a heavy heart. I had hoped to report an agreement arising out of a mediation process that has continued all weekend, but it has now concluded without resolution. We are therefore faced with the following choice: opening the university with the necessary security or compromising the academic project for the rest of the year.
The group of students with whom we have been engaging characterise themselves as 'SRC Candidates / #ShackvilleTRC' and are occupying the Steve Biko Students' Union Building. Many are SRC candidates in the current suspended SRC election. They have been the driving force behind the campaign to shut down UCT. Their demands have been manifold, but the most urgent is the call for a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) to address the shackville protests in February this year and its aftermath in terms of interdicts and disciplinary processes. The call for a 'TRC' was in fact presented to Council in June by a different group of students and staff. I followed this up on behalf of the new Council in August, but no progress was made.
I joined the Special Executive Task Team (SETT) in its engagement with the 'SRC Candidates' to try to find a way forward. We were involved in very lengthy deliberations over Friday, Saturday and today. It included an excellent mediator that the students proposed and SETT agreed to. I felt all along that we were making good progress and reported to Council (on Saturday) and to the Senior Leadership Group (early on Sunday) that I was hopeful that we would sign the proposed agreement. That certainly was the conclusion we had all drawn by midday Sunday.
The agreement would have meant that the institution could open tomorrow (Monday) and that we would see no further disruption, and that to the extent that there remained protesters opposed to opening the campus, this would require minimum security to maintain an open campus. The agreement would also begin in earnest an Institutional Reconciliation and Transformation Commission (IRTC), the first phase of which would be a review of the events leading up to the shackville protests, the events on the night itself, including the calling in of private security and the Public Order Police, and the interdicts and disciplinary processes that followed.