Durban - The EFF Student Command (EFFSC)-led student representative committee (SRC) at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) has rejected KwaZulu-Natal acting premier Sihle Zikalala’s interventions amid violent protest in which one student died at the university. Zikalala, also the ANC provincial chairperson, made the offer to mediate before Siyabonga Madonsela, a third-year business administration student, was shot dead on Tuesday.
The EFFSC activist was allegedly shot by a private security guard while students were allegedly pelting police and security guards with stones.
Addressing a press conference outside DUT, SRC president Sesiyanda Godlimpi accused Zikalala of being opportunistic.
“He is scoring some political point as this is not from his conscious, therefore we will not accept any help from him. We only want him to make sure that the thug that shot a student is apprehended instead of intervening where he does not belong,” Godlimpi said.
He said Higher Education Minister Naledi Pandor should be the one coming up with solutions because Zikalala “is very powerless” in this matter.
A group dressed in EFF regalia disrupted the SA Students’ Congress briefing on Madonsela’s death.
They demanded that Sasco provincial chairperson Mqondisi Duma stop talking about the shooting because “you don’t know anything about Siyabonga”. Godlimpi said Sasco was also using Madonsela to score points.
But Duma said: “After we called for the shutdown, they mobilised community members who are not students.”
He welcomed Zikalala’s intervention. Reacting to Godlimpi’s remarks, Zikalala said although the institutions were managed nationally, the provincial cabinet had seen it necessary to intervene as the institutions were in KZN.