THE Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) yesterday granted a final interdict against five UCT students.
Alex Holtz, Masixole Mlandu, Chumani Maxwele, Slovo Magida and Zola Shokane were interdicted by the university following a protest for student housing in February.
UCT then obtained an urgent application for an interim interdict, which was granted at the Western Cape High Court.
Conditions attached to that interdict barred them from entering the university campus unless they had the university's consent to be there for academic purposes, or to occupy student housing that had been allocated to them.
It further interdicted them from interfering with the rendering of university services and the university's decision-making processes; destroying, damaging or defacing university property; participating in or inciting others to participate in unlawful conduct or protest action on university premises.
The SCA was approached to consider whether the Western Cape High Court was correct to grant a final interdict against the students.
The appeal arose from a protest, known as "Shackville", that happened on campus when protesters erected a shack along Residence Road on the upper campus and created an exclusion zone around it.
During that protest statues and the War Memorial were defaced with slogans, and portraits, paintings and photographs were removed from the walls of several buildings and defaced or burnt.
In its judgment, the SCA said South African universities have been engulfed by waves of student protests conducted under names such as #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall since last year.
“The protests and the actions of protesters, university administrators, campus security and the police are the subject of heated debate in the media. This appeal is not about the merits or legitimacy of those protests. It involves no judgment on the conflicting views of the students and their supporters, the university administrators, the politicians and others caught up in these events,” read the judgment.
Holtz, expelled from the university along with Mlandu and Maxwele, said her future was uncertain and she was consulting her lawyer.
UCT spokesperson Pat Lucas said the SCA confirmed the respondents were jointly and severally liable to pay the costs of the order.
“The SCA (yesterday) confirmed (in a 49-page judgment) that the five appellants, against an interdict that was made a final order of the court on May 11, 2016, are interdicted from erecting unauthorised structures on the University of Cape Town campus, damaging any of UCT’s premises.”