Wits SRC president Aphiwe Mnyamana suspended after students take protest to Vice-Chancellor’s house
Wits SRC president Aphiwe Mnyamana was on Monday suspended from the institution following a week of protests over financial exclusion and accommodation issues.
Mnyamana announced his suspension on Twitter and said he was waiting for instructions from his legal advisor, Advocate Dali Mpofu.
“We will respond duly however the peaceful protest will continue with or without me,” he wrote on his Twitter account.
I have noted the Suspension from @WitsUniversity and I am waiting for instruction from our legal advisors @AdvDali_Mpofu, we will respond duly however the peaceful protest will continue with or without me. https://t.co/P6BdyxVmTu
— WITS_SRC_President (@AphiweMnyamana) March 6, 2023
Mnyamana’s suspension comes after striking students on Sunday marched to the house of the university’s vice-chancellor, Zeblon Vilakazi, and demonstrated outside it in a bid to put pressure on the university to meet their demands.
The students started protesting on Tuesday last week and have continued amid threats of legal action by the university.
In a recent update to the students, Mnyamana said they had approached Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi and other officials, including the minister of higher education, to intervene in the matter to resolve the impasse.
“The senior executive team deferred the meeting to tomorrow as they are of the view that students can afford to sleep in labs, libraries, and campus bathrooms for another day…
“To this, the SRC remains even more determined to see the realization of all demands sought by the student body. Our enemy is resolute in the arrogance, we will meet them with the full force of student activism as ours is a just cause,“ he said in a statement.
Earlier, students rejected some of the concessions made by the university, with SRC member Thato Lebitso saying these were minor and did not make a significant difference to the plight of students, who were still without accommodation and had yet to be registered weeks into the academic year.
-IOL
In other news – Police say drug overdose might have killed Pearl Shongwe
Late radio news reader Pearl Shongwe‘s cause of death has been suspected to be a drug overdose. A local publication reports that police officers found drugs in her bedroom when they did a cleanup at her home.
“We suspect drug overdose because we have found drugs in her bedroom when we were combing the house for possible leads to her death,” the police officer told the publication. They further stated that they are looking into surveillance cameras to determine who might have been the last person to be with Shongwe while she was alive. Learn More
