UJ may suspend more students, staff

Speaking at a media briefing, Vice Chancellor Ihron Rensburg says they will beef up security today as students have started to write their final exams. 

He says they have identified six key points on all four campuses that will require adequate security.

He says they need to create the conditions for exams to continue.

This came after students clashed with security earlier in the day. Some eight students and workers are believed to have been injured as a result. 

Men in black suits, hired by the university as extra security, were also seen pepper spraying students.

Later, one worker told reporters that stun grenades were also used.

Rensburg says they have already suspended four students, including SRC president Khutso Rammutla, after a fire was apparently started by workers in the library on Wednesday night. He said some 5 000 students were in the library at the time.

"Six, seven times we had to evacuate the library. So, when a student leader makes a threat or incites violence as they have done, then we have to act and we have acted," he said, adding that more suspensions would follow.

He went on to say that disciplinary proceedings against both the staff and students have been initiated.

Protests flared up yesterday as students came out in support of campus workers who demanded an end to outsourcing.

Rensburg said at the briefing that he will aim to find a solution to outsourcing by December.

SRC chairperson at the Soweto campus, Siyabonga Ntlabathi, said earlier: "We are here to ensure that workers voice their views in a manner that is not wasting anyone's energy and is not going to provoke the police. We are here to support them. If they want to sleep here, we will sleep here with them," he said. 

Meanwhile UJ student and EFF member Abubakr Amad said he will be accompanying five protesters to a police station soon to lay charges of assault against security staff.

(Photo: Twitter/@MajavuThabiso)