Problems surrounding the accommodation of students forced the Eastcape Midlands College (EMC) in Grahamstown to close on 27 February.
Problems surrounding the accommodation of students forced the Eastcape Midlands College (EMC) in Grahamstown to close on 27 February.
Conflict between the EMC and local landlords accommodating students arose when landlords claimed that they had not received the rent due for some of the student tenants.
EMC campus manager, Queeny Xulubana, denied this and claimed that all payments were up to date.
The rent paid to landlords is usually covered by EMC, which uses funding from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) student bursaries to do so.
Around 90% of the 1300 students attending the EMC Grahamstown receive bursaries from NSFAS. As of 19 February, however, these bursaries have been cut from R1600 to R550 per month.
The college is due to reopen on 10 March, but many lecturers and students are dubious. “Yes, we want to go back to school. Yes, we want to study. But this whole thing is having a big impacton us. It is a lot of pressure,” said a Finance student at the EMC, who declined to be named.
Many of the students with whom Grocott’s Mail spoke refused to give their names as they had been told by officials of the college that this could result in immediate expulsion.
“We want to see a college that is doing what it’s supposed to do: teaching!” says Mthobisi Buthelezi, a secretary of the South African Students Congress (SASCO). Buthelezi said that a meeting between representatives of the college, SASCO and the Education Department, which was held on 27 February, concluded that a special finance meeting was necessary to deal with the matter.
A landlords' committee meeting was held on 13 January and the EMC was given until the end of January to pay the outstanding rent. When the due payments were not paid, landlords had no choice but to evict many of the students.
Students took to the streets in a number of protests, carrying banners saying “Homeless!” among other slogans.
According to a landlord who rents flats out to EMC students, rent has not been paid since January. He said landlords are waiting for more information from the college, but all they have been told so far is that the EMC will be reopening.
It appears that many of the students who were forced to return to their home towns are not planning to return before a solution has been found.
The accommodation issue is an annual reoccurring problem for the EMC: In August last year, multiple demonstrations also took place.
Despite multiple attempts at contacting the college, the EMC remained unresponsive to requests for comment.
