UCT has been granted an interim order prohibiting further student protests that disrupt activity on campus or lead to violence. A News24 report says the Western Cape High Court granted the order on Friday after the university said it could not resume face-to-face learning by the end of the week.

The order affects the SRC and anyone participating, or intending to participate, in unlawful conduct and/or unlawful protest action.

In terms of the order, students are allowed to enter buildings on campus only for ‘the transaction of university business’ such as lectures and tutorials. The order prevents them from ‘interrupting or disrupting any lectures, tutorials or similar activities, or preventing the continuation of lectures or any other studying activities’.

The order further bars students from interfering with the operation of the university's shuttle services and buses.

Students are also not allowed to destroy, damage, or deface any of the university's property, as well as intimidate ‘any person on the university's property or intimidate any person seeking to access the university's properties, including at any of the university's student residences’.

Full News24 report

UCT law faculty dean Danwood Chirwa earlier sent a letter to the executive accusing it of knowingly exposing staff and students to danger and doing nothing about it.

TimesLIVE reports the letter, sent on Friday on behalf of the faculty, said staff and students were exposed to ‘the risk of intimidation, aggression and violence from protesting students, without taking appropriate protective and remedial measures’.

Chirwa said some staff and students were ‘assaulted’ by protesting students while others were met with ‘extreme rudeness and aggression’.

He alleged the executive ‘appears to have known or ought to have known that the SRC would stage a shutdown of the university from 13 February’, but ‘failed to communicate to the university community about the planned shutdown and the university’s response to it’.

The letter also claimed campus protection services were either ‘absent or looked on or showed no interest’ in preventing these acts.

On Thursday, the executive sent a circular to staff saying that ‘the university is in a position to fully resume its academic project, including the face-to-face teaching and learning programme and research programmes, from Friday, 17 February 2023’.

It said the university met the SRC and had ‘taken all reasonable measures to ensure that as many academically eligible students as possible receive funding support’.

The SRC, however, accused the executive of putting out false information, saying the issues are far from resolved with scores of students unable to register and with many sitting without housing.

Full TimesLIVE report