Siphelo Bayana
17 February 2016
Yesterday, University of Cape
Town’s Rhodes Must Fall Movement staged in front of the Jameson stairs where
they were protesting for alleged lack of accommodation for their fellow black
students.
In one of the interviews Bush Radio Correspondent, Siphelo Bayana
conducted, one of the students said “We
are gathered here because the University is exploiting black students and
directly removing them from the residences and accommodating foreign national’s
students and white students only”.
Bayana spoke to the students
of UCT who are also allocated to residence houses, however some expressed they
are living in fear because they do not know how long they will be allowed to
stay in the residence because of their financial exclusion and that decision is
up to the University Counsel.
He says “They claim that the issue they are dealing with is poor service of
administration and it’s been happening for at least 5-years.
He adds that “What happens is when a student applies to
enrol at UCT they apply for residence accommodation as well and they receive
confirmation that they have secured a place in the residence, when they get
into UCT what they are not told is that there has been an over allocation of
rooms which means if for an example the residence can accommodate 200 students
and the Housing Department allocates 300 students to the residence, then it
becomes an issue of first come first serve”.
He continued that “They put students in one big room where many
bags and belongings are stashed into that small space as far as possible and
you are expected to stay in a hall with other students you don’t even know and
there is no privacy at all for the duration of this housing crisis.
This then
means you are homeless because UCT does not consider black students, the
reality is they make sure that whites and foreigners live much comfortable than
actual black South Africans.”
“White students come to live in residences just for the fun of it for
the experience and black students come to the residences because they have no
means of living where they want to, they come with a hungry interest of
learning, they come to res for survival” one student concluded
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