The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) has concluded that police acted outside the law when dispersing student protestors in Mthatha in May 2024. Protests were held over several days by Walter Sisulu University (WSU) students, which resulted in multiple injuries after they turned violent. The commission held hearings on the protests from August to November 2024 and on Thursday released its 84-page report on the findings.
The hearings included sworn statements from students, police, the private security industry, civil society groups, Eastern Cape government departments and independent ballistics experts. Photos of the scenes of the protest seen by ballistics experts confirm the presence of high-calibre, high-velocity bullet casings, while the report details the circumstances faced by police at the height of the protests. Submissions from the Student Representative Council (SRC) state the protest began on Thursday 23 May 2024 after a student meeting earlier that week.
That day, students blocked the universityās main gates by staging a sit in, which they repeated the following day. The SRC said the situation escalated when private security attempted to disperse them on Friday morning using rubber bullets and pepper spray. āThe SRC stated that this use of force was unprovoked and that in reaction to the violence, some students began throwing stones at the security personnel,ā theSAHRCās report says.
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The protestors took a break over the weekend and resumed on Monday after receiving no formal response to a memorandum of demands submitted to the university the previous week. Police and protestors clashed on Monday 27 May, with the SRC claiming that āsome of the ammunition may have been live roundsā. Adding to the tension was a protest on the same day held by taxi associations in Mthatha, but the SRC said suggestions that students joined the taxi associations were āfalse allegationsā, as the student protest began first.
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