A group of students attending Eastcape Midlands College in Grahamstown took to the streets on Tuesday to protest their living conditions at Stone Crescent Hotel.
A group of students attending Eastcape Midlands College in Grahamstown took to the streets on Tuesday to protest their living conditions at Stone Crescent Hotel.
They walked from the hotel, which is on the N2 to Port Elizabeth about 8km outside of Grahamstown, to the College on St Aidan's Avenue.
Students showed Grocott's Mail bottles of murky, brown water, saying this was the "filtered spring water" they had to drink.
South African Students Congress political educator and student Matthew Mkeleni said the students who could not be accommodated in town were forced to live at the hotel – or lose their bursaries.
They claim up to six students are forced to share one room, and say many of the toilets are broken.
A man shook a stick in the air, holding up a small dead snake he said came from a tap in the bathrooms.
Some held up doctor's notes for the various stomach ailments they had suffered, allegedly due to the water they had to drink.
While representatives from the College declined to comment on the issue today, hotel owner Tariq Hayat says the students were placed there late last month and are set to stay until November due to an accommodation crisis on the part of the College.
While Hayat does not know why some students are being housed in his hotel, he says a visit from a municipal health inspector showed nothing out of the ordinary.
The students were protesting with the aim of forcing the College to take decisive action on the matter – either moving them or taking steps to improve the conditions, they said.
