'An Avoidable Crisis': Parliament hits out at Fort Hare over student unrest
Parliament’s Higher Education Committee will visit Fort Hare's Alice Campus after violent protests caused extensive damage, with repairs estimated to cost up to R500 million, disrupting academic operations and infrastructure.
Image: UFH
Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Higher Education will conduct an urgent oversight visit to the University of Fort Hare’s Alice Campus on Tuesday, 21 October, following violent student protests that caused extensive damage to infrastructure and disrupted academic operations.
Committee chairperson Tebogo Letsie said the destruction at the Eastern Cape campus was estimated to be between R250 million and R500 million. He blamed the university’s management for not engaging with students and for failing to hold Student Representative Council (SRC) elections.
“The violent student unrest could have been avoided if the university management had engaged with students and allowed the Student Representative Council (SRC) elections to take place as requested,” Letsie said.
“Instead, the university management decided to appoint an Interim SRC after the term of the elected SRC expired.”
He said critical infrastructure, including academic records, had been damaged, which could affect the university’s ability to verify qualifications for students due to graduate.
“We hope that the committee’s intervention will help bring all parties together to unpack the root causes of this unrest and to find lasting solutions,” he said.
Letsie also raised concerns about the situation at the University of the Free State (UFS), where protests broke out following the university’s decision to scrap provisional registration for the 2026 academic year. He described the move as an “unnecessary provocation of students”.
To make matters worse, he said UFS management gave students just 24 hours to vacate their residences, leaving many, especially those funded by NSFAS, without the means to return home on short notice.
“The excessive use of force by armed private security personnel towards unarmed students was seriously concerning,” Letsie said.
The committee has deployed some of its members to the UFS to conduct a fact-finding mission and engage with university management.
IOL previously reported that Academic activities at UFS are set to resume this week following disruptions across all three campuses.
According to the university, operations will restart in phases, with full academic activity resuming on Thursday. The academic calendar has been amended, with year-end exams pushed back from 3 to 10 November, except for final-year Health Sciences students, who will begin exams on 2 November to allow December graduation.
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