Students run riot on campus

Conflict between rival student groups at the University of Natal in South Africa has caused chaos, with running battles with each other and the police.

The protests were sparked by unhappiness on the part of the ANC-aligned South African Students' Congress (Sasco) at losing Student Representative Council elections.

On September 9, angry students rampaged through the campus, smashing windows and car windscreens. At least four students and four policemen were injured, 26 students were arrested, and around Pounds 30,000-worth of property was damaged.

For a week the main campus in Durban rocked to the rhythmic thud of the toyi-toyi and raucous singing and shouting, interspersed by the smashing of glass and the whiff of teargas.

The election winners staged counter demonstrations, demanding that cancelled lectures resume so that they could continue to learn. They claimed that Sasco students had threatened the new SRC leaders, beaten up fellow students and thrown bricks at them in lectures.

On the one side African students armed themselves with sticks and stones. On the other side were white and Asian students, some with guns.

At the heart of the trouble is the irritation of "ordinary" students at the disruptive behaviour of "political" students. Sasco manages to muster about 400 students to protests on the Durban campus, which has around 10,000 students, at present neatly divided into a third African, white and Asian.

White, Asian and the leftwing Pan African Students' Organisation (Paso) students formed an unlikely alliance, and wrested control from Sasco. Phrank Swart, the new SRC president, is the first white president for years and son of a campus mathematics lecturer.

Sasco decided to protest after three of its nominees for positions on the SRC were excluded from voting on council posts. The result was that Sasco failed to secure the positions of president and vice president. "The rightwing bulldozed the normal constitutional processes by allocating portfolios to the exclusion of the three nominated members," said a Sasco statement. But Panyaza Lesufi, former SRC president and Sasco leader, had chaired the meeting, at which Sasco had agreed that the three nominees present should not vote because they were 1995/96 representatives and the new nominees were not yet in place.

Mr Swart said that the SRC constitution had been vague on the issue, and that the meeting had been friendly. "Now the incident has been turned into a racial issue with me being branded a 'rightwing bigot'," he complained to the Mercury newspaper.

Paso, too, condemned Sasco's actions. Paso chairman Tshopo Seneke said: "They want to overhaul the system because they didn't get the positions they had earmarked for themselves."

Later Sasco added the allegedly slow pace of transformation at the university to its list of grievances.

Staff, and especially lecturers, became increasingly angry at the repeated cancellation of lectures, closures of buildings and damage to property. Many reported the irritation of alternatively being locked into or out of their buildings.

Staff and students have criticised the university management for its "soft" attitude towards demonstrating Sasco students.

They want it to take firm action against protests which degenerate into violence and crime - and claim that if the university had taken a firm stance during previous unrest, the latest disturbance might have been avoided.

Staff have also complained about the university's willingness to pay bail for the 213 students arrested so far and even for a bus to transport protesting students to the police station at which their colleagues were being held - while refusing to help pay for repairs to vehicles.