The Public Relations Officer in the Ministry of Education, Nomsa Zuze, has threatened that her Ministry will withdraw all the 49 students under their scholarship regime from the North West University, South Africa, if the chaotic situation, which has seen countless class boycotts, continues.
Zuze made these threats after she revealed that she received assurances on Friday from the Student Affairs Manager at South Africa’s North West University that classes will be back on course on Monday 6 October after many chaotic days, which were followed by a short break .
Zuze described the information as happy news which she would pass on to the students who might have returned home during the chaotic days and the short vacation.
Going back to the issue of threats to withdraw the students under their sponsorships she said: “We will definitely withdraw our students if we come to the conclusion that the chaotic situation is undermining the purpose of our intention of sending them to the University.”
Zuze said they are closely monitoring the situation at the University and revealed that a fact finding mission had just returned from the University to get first hand information on the situation.
Asked what the fact finding mission found, Zuze said that they found that out of the 49 students there, only 6 of them who were staying on campus had been adversely affected by the strike and that they had since moved them out of the campus where the disturbances are taking place most of the time.
Zuze expressed appreciation that none of the students they are sponsoring or any of the other 26 Batswana on campus had either been injured or arrested in the chaos that had been taking place on campus.
“The behaviour of our students in this instance is a clear indication that they understand that their mission in foreign countries is to learn and they are doing just that, fortunately, and it pleases us,” she said.
The North West University has recently experienced disturbances which South African media reports say resulted from the students’ demands that their dean be removed from his position because he was allegedly not concerned about their welfare and that students who had earlier on been expelled from the University for allegedly encouraging chaos on the campus be reinstated.
Reports say that during their demonstrations, the students burned down some University buildings resulting in some of them appearing in court.
Employees of some on-campus security firms at the University were, on the other hand, reported to have been arrested for stealing students’ belongings during the strikes.
