Wits students protest at VC's home

The SRC addressed students on Sunday to provide feedback from their meetings with the institution. 

Students, who are protesting over issues related to historical debt and lack of accommodation, then moved to the home of Wits vice-chancellor Zeblon Vilakazi’s residence "to put pressure" on him to accede to their demands. 

But in a written response the university said the demand on historical debt had been amended from the original demand.

They now want students owing up to R150 000 to be allowed to register.

“Given resource constraints, the university is not able to allow all students across all programmes, whether full-time, part-time or occasional, to register without them meeting the re-registration requirements," Wits said in a statement.

“This will further only be applicable to students seeking to register for the programme that they were registered in for the 2022 academic year, and not for registration towards new programmes, part-time and/or occasional studies.

“The university will endeavour to seek external donor funds for this once-off concession, to assist academically excellent students. The university will accordingly allow the late registration of students who fall into this cohort of students only.”

Read Wits full response below:

The SRC also responded with a written letter to the concessions by the institution.

“In response to the demand to allow all students owing, irrespective of their debt amount, to register for the 2023 academic year; the university stated that it will 'on a case-by-case basis, for 2023 only and based on resource availability, consider the requests for registration assistance from unregistered students with a PCD (PROCEED with no conditions attached) outcome ONLY.' The SRC does not consider this an adequate solution as: Firstly, students with the RET and other PCD outcomes with conditions are excluded from the concession and thus will not be allowed to register, despite being academically eligible.”

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