At least 12 students were arrested yesterday for malicious damage to property following the torching of the sports centre and other infrastructure at the Fort Hare university in Alice, Eastern Cape.
Early indications suggest that students were unhappy about the time table for the mid-year exams and thus resorted to vandalism to get their way.
Police say the examination hall was slightly damaged and furniture was removed and torched just outside the building. The mob reportedly went amok, damaging several surveillance camera systems and also looted the institution’s cafeteria.
Such violence has increasingly become a familiar feature in student protest across university campuses. Earlier this year we witnessed protesting Wits students go on the rampage, uprooting and destroying public infrastructure in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, in full view of cameras.
Their brazenness suggested they neither cared about the gravity of their actions nor the consequences thereof. It suggested a level of entitlement that can only be described as criminal.
This is perhaps because this culture of vandalism as a weapon of protest is not limited to young people on university campuses. It is deeply entrenched in SA society.
There are at least two reasons for this, which we must ultimately tackle if we are to do away with such beahaviour. First, there is often no legal accountability on those who damage property, public or otherwise.
Even when suspects are arrested, convictions are so few and far in-between that they are hardly seen as a deterrent to such behaviour.
This alone characterises the offence of damaging property as a minuscule in the eyes of perpetrators, even though its impact is far-reaching for the functioning of the affected community.
Second, this kind of vandalism is often socially justified as an acceptable, even necessary feature of a protest that compels a response from authorities. Many people believe they must destroy the little they have in order to grab the attention of those in authority. Herein lies a much bigger problem.
It is the framing of wrongdoing as a necessary means of survival rather than the first step to a slippery slope of anarchy. We must reject this notion as misguided, problematic and deserving of scorn.
No society can develop when it holds on to self-sabotaging practices which ultimately undermine our public good.
SOWETAN | No place for destructive protest
Image: Sithandiwe Velaphi
At least 12 students were arrested yesterday for malicious damage to property following the torching of the sports centre and other infrastructure at the Fort Hare university in Alice, Eastern Cape.
Early indications suggest that students were unhappy about the time table for the mid-year exams and thus resorted to vandalism to get their way.
Police say the examination hall was slightly damaged and furniture was removed and torched just outside the building. The mob reportedly went amok, damaging several surveillance camera systems and also looted the institution’s cafeteria.
Such violence has increasingly become a familiar feature in student protest across university campuses. Earlier this year we witnessed protesting Wits students go on the rampage, uprooting and destroying public infrastructure in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, in full view of cameras.
Their brazenness suggested they neither cared about the gravity of their actions nor the consequences thereof. It suggested a level of entitlement that can only be described as criminal.
This is perhaps because this culture of vandalism as a weapon of protest is not limited to young people on university campuses. It is deeply entrenched in SA society.
There are at least two reasons for this, which we must ultimately tackle if we are to do away with such beahaviour. First, there is often no legal accountability on those who damage property, public or otherwise.
Even when suspects are arrested, convictions are so few and far in-between that they are hardly seen as a deterrent to such behaviour.
This alone characterises the offence of damaging property as a minuscule in the eyes of perpetrators, even though its impact is far-reaching for the functioning of the affected community.
Second, this kind of vandalism is often socially justified as an acceptable, even necessary feature of a protest that compels a response from authorities. Many people believe they must destroy the little they have in order to grab the attention of those in authority. Herein lies a much bigger problem.
It is the framing of wrongdoing as a necessary means of survival rather than the first step to a slippery slope of anarchy. We must reject this notion as misguided, problematic and deserving of scorn.
No society can develop when it holds on to self-sabotaging practices which ultimately undermine our public good.
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