Crimes both violent and malicious in nature are on the rise, but Stellenbosch University student activists are rising in resistance along with it.
Students have taken action against what they believe to be inadequate security measures implemented by university and municipal management. This follows a fierce increase in violent crimes on campus in the past week involving physical abuse of and harm to female students in particular.
“Muggings are commonplace, no longer traumatic, a part of life,” said Karl Kemp, a student activist who voiced his anger in an article on the student community blog, Bonfire. “We live in constant fear and paranoia. Criminals laugh at us. Stellenbosch is a shopping mall with a perpetual 100%-off sale.”
Kemp is not alone in his views.
Incidents of crime in multiple forms and intensities have either directly or indirectly affected students and Stellenbosch residents. People have lost valuable items such as laptops, cameras and iPads to burglaries on campus, in university residences and in private accommodation across town.
It was, however, the kidnapping and fortunate escape of Ilze-dene Oberholzer last week that brought the message of inadequate safety measures to the attention of the national media.
For Oberholzer’s friends, her kidnapping en route to a test was the final straw that drove fed-up flatmates Nadia Gava, Alexandra Vorster, Maret Viljoen and Nicola Kaden to take action.
“We just decided to create a Facebook event and see who felt the same way,” Kaden said.
This led to the design of a manifesto by the four flatmates and Kemp that called on “university management, campus security, local authorities, the local police department and all other relevant actors to improve on existing crime prevention and crime solving”.
A Blind Protest was subsequently organised, hosted on the Rooi Plein last Friday. The event, organised on Facebook, urged students to “demand immediate action” by joining the protest.
The young activists aimed to improve conditions of crime prevention on campus by placing pressure on Stellenbosch officials through peaceful protest. “We believe that placing the blame on the University, the SRC, police and municipality will not solve the current issue at hand. We want to unite, not fight,” Kaden said.
Kemp, however, believed that a quiet protest would not put enough pressure on officials to adequately satisfy students’ safety demands. In a divergence of interest, he illegally interrupted the protest to provide a voice to the silent cause he had been involved in from the start.
Referring to his decision to take a radical stance, he said, “I’m sick of living in fear and stress whilst management focuses on profit maximisation and political appeasement while our student leaders sit and pant at their feet. It’s a ridiculous state of affairs and campus needed to see that the ‘proper’ channels are basically a suggestion when real action is necessary.
“‘Critical engagement’, ‘sustainability’, ‘healthy discussion’ – these are concepts suited to a high school debate hall; not a battlefield where people are being abducted and raped.”
Despite the differences in their approaches to demanding safety measures, something is being done to challenge the current situation of crime on campus, and the university has responded.
A senior media liaison practitioner at the university, Martin Viljoen, said that plans to reschedule evening tests and exams in light of the heightened crime had been proposed, as well as suggestions for a bus service to transport students from their exam venues after dark.
Other students are actively joining the cause. Through participating in the protest, reading the manifesto and signing the petition for campus security enhancements, people who had been directly or indirectly affected by crime could voice their demands.
“I took part because over the past six months the crime in Stellenbosch has sky-rocketed, particularly the number of crimes that are violent in nature,” said Tessa Lean, a fourth-year student. “Students need to stand together and demand that action be taken so that we, especially female students, can feel safe again.”
Nadia Gava, one of the four initial activists that organised the protest, said that the campaign has quietened down while students write exams; however they plan on continuing protests next semester.
This contribution was produced as part of a collaboration between LitNet and the University of Stellenbosch's Department of Journalism in 2014.