Let me start with the big news. An agreement was signed on November 6th and there have been no disruptions for almost three weeks!
Now, on to the details. My last update was over a month ago. Here are my two excuses. First, it has been hard to write these updates. UCT has been a very stressful environment making it difficult to accomplish much of anything. Second, we took a road trip to Johannesburg (more details in next update or check out some of the other blog posts) that delayed this update.
Week of Monday, October 17th
My last update was on Monday, 17 October when the protesters broke into the Physics building.
On Wednesday (19 Oct), they returned to the Physics building (video) and the academics tried to block the doors of our building from protestors in order to avoid a repeat of Monday, but eventually a sympathetic Physics student opened the door for them (video). They banged on doors up and down hallways, removed people from the library (video) and then were eventually peacefully escorted from the building by security (video).
There were a number of incidents across campus during this week. The protesting students were systematically entering building with libraries and computer labs in order to chase any students out of the buildings as they continued to try and shut down the university. There were a number of altercations with security and arrests of protestors during the week with a steady increase in the levels of violence (see links below).
Monday, October 24th to Wednesday, October 26th
The next week marked a turning point in the protest action at UCT. It started with further escalation of violence when 4 cars were burned on campus (link to article describing event), but two events seem to push events to a climax. First, UCT announced an interim interdict that prohibited the disruption of exams, libraries, research and other laboratories, and the ability of any of the university’s employees to do their work. This was in direct response to the events from the previous week. There had not previously been any explicit statement regarding the legality of disruptions at UCT and the interdict seemed to "disrupt" the disruptions, particularly the statement about needing to be 200 meters from any of the venues listed above, which basically excluded any protest action anywhere on campus.
The second event was the Minister of Finance giving his mid-year budget report to Parliament in downtown Cape Town on Wednesday, 26 October. A number of pickets and marches were planned throughout the day to petition government to do something about higher education in South Africa. The UCT slot was allocated for 9 am in the morning and after an hour of peaceful picketing and delivering our demands (link), we disbanded to make way for the later marches. It was not a good sign that the police trucks with trailers full of rolls of barb wire pulled up as we were leaving. Needless to say, the afternoon protests by the #FeesMustFall students did not end so peacefully. After the speech (in which the Minister promised an increase of R17 billion (~$1 billion) over 3 years to fund higher education), the students got antsy, provoked the police and then for the next two hours, chaos reigned in Cape Town as the police chased protestors around the city with stun grenades. See these two new articles for further description of the events.
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| UCT Academics handing over list of demands outside South African Parliament |
After October 26th
It is hard to know what exactly changed, but the protest disruptions largely subsided after October 26th. As far as I know, there have been no major incidents at UCT since (other campuses are still closed or under protest). Everyone on campus was still very tense, particularly since the level of violence had been slowly escalating, so we waited for the next wave of protests, but it never came. This tension, of course, made it difficult to do any work, particularly trying to prepare the exams for the students. As the time passed, campus started to get back to normal as everyone prepared for the start of exams on Monday, November 7th. Even after the agreement was signed on November 6th, there was a lot of apprehension on Monday morning when the first exams started, but every thing went smoothly and have been for the last 8 days. There are still reminders of what has happened, like the chain-link fences surrounding the exam venues and the ID security points at each exam entrance, but things are feeling a bit more normal.
What comes next?
This is the big question. Two interesting aspects of the agreement between the protesting groups and the UCT executive (link) are: (1) The use of an Institutional Reconciliation and Transformation Commission (IRTC) to address some of the institutional issues that have arisen from the protests as well as address the scope of what is considered acceptable protest action at UCT. (2) The agreement also grants clemency (suspension of charges while no further disruptive activity occurs) for actions taken by protestors during the two months with the possibility of amnesty.
In the short term, the academic program for 2016 has been saved, but there have been serious consequences for 2017. Most of the departments and faculties have abandoned the blended learning idea in favor of a 3-week mini-semester at the start of 2017. The Science Faculty has decided to stick with the blended learning (posting online materials and hosting limited face-to-face interactions [I delivered 2 hours of lecture this week and will give 2 more hours next week]) in order to give the academics time off (aka do some research) at the start of January. The university has given all students the option to write their exams now (7 Nov to 24 Nov) or defer them until 2017 (23 Jan to 10 Feb). In addition to the mini-semester, there will be one additional week of lecturing in the first semester of 2017 in order to "catch-up" any missed material. The result of all this is that we will start the semester more than 3 weeks late, our mid-year break has been shorted by a week and we will once again be running exams to the end of November 2017 and marking until the middle of December (same as we will do this year). It is going to be a long year.
In the short term, the academic program for 2016 has been saved, but there have been serious consequences for 2017. Most of the departments and faculties have abandoned the blended learning idea in favor of a 3-week mini-semester at the start of 2017. The Science Faculty has decided to stick with the blended learning (posting online materials and hosting limited face-to-face interactions [I delivered 2 hours of lecture this week and will give 2 more hours next week]) in order to give the academics time off (aka do some research) at the start of January. The university has given all students the option to write their exams now (7 Nov to 24 Nov) or defer them until 2017 (23 Jan to 10 Feb). In addition to the mini-semester, there will be one additional week of lecturing in the first semester of 2017 in order to "catch-up" any missed material. The result of all this is that we will start the semester more than 3 weeks late, our mid-year break has been shorted by a week and we will once again be running exams to the end of November 2017 and marking until the middle of December (same as we will do this year). It is going to be a long year.
In the long term, it is hard to say where we will go for here, but hopefully UCT will be able to heal from this and will become a better place as a result. We are also hopeful that future protests can be avoided because it has taken a serious toll on the fabric of the university and I am not sure that it can endure another sustained series of protests. There is no doubt that UCT (and South Africa) suffers from severe cultural and racial insensitivity and it will take all of us to work together to make a difference. Please pray for this country and this university as it navigates a delicate future.
