Paddy O'Halloran, Daily Maverick
On Monday 19 October
2015, Grahamstown police reinforced by officers and equipment from East London
twice dispersed protesting students at Eastcape Midlands College (EMC).
Students at the college were protesting corruption by their institution’s
administration. They had been joined by students from Rhodes University, down
the hill, who had shut down their institution early in the morning as part of
the national protest against unaffordable tertiary education. The police threw
stun grenades and, in the second dispersal, chased students with a water cannon
using chemical water that caused severe itching. When the students retreated to
the Rhodes University campus, the police gathered in force at the campus
entrance until the vice-chancellor went to the police station to officially
request that they stand down. Elsewhere in South Africa so far this week — in
Cape Town, Stellenbosch, and Port Elizabeth — protesting students and academics
have been met with arrest, tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. With
the exception of Rhodes, the reaction by state and universities has been to
break the protests using force.
In Grahamstown, police
belligerence masks a dangerous lack of police action. As quick as the police
were to send personnel, vehicles, and equipment to confront the students, they
were far more nonchalant about serious community concerns.
Recently, a number of
murders involving mutilations have spread fear among the residents of
Grahamstown’s townships.
The Unemployed People’s
Movement (UPM) told police that the anxiety and rumours caused by the murders
could lead to xenophobic attacks if they went unaddressed. On 12 October, they
called a community meeting at which the police could respond. The police
representatives did not appear until they were called, and arrived an
hour-and-a-half late.
Said UPM organiser Ayanda
Kota: “Subsequent to that we went to the same person [at] the police station
and raised our concerns. Nothing was done.” The lack of action by the police
has led to terrible consequences for Grahamstown.
Since the early afternoon
of Wednesday, 21 October, Grahamstown has been the site of xenophobic attacks
on shop owners and township residents from other countries and other parts of
South Africa. While police monitored a peaceful and legal protest by Rhodes
students and staff at the western end of the city, shops were attacked and
looted across town. UPM members stood between flying bricks and the shopfronts,
pleading with the attackers to stop or helping the people inside to escape.
Police responded to UPM’s
call, but when people told the police officers they were going to the township
to loot shops, they were allowed to proceed. No one was arrested on the spot in
spite of the announcement of criminal intent.
Local newspaper Grocott’s
Mail reports that 95 arrests have been made over the looting of 75 shops and
that police increased their presence in Grahamstown overnight. This report
fails to note that the police had at least a week to attend to the community’s
call for help.
In spite of arresting
almost 100 people, the police have failed the Grahamstown community. Alerted to
legitimate fears, they did not respect the people the people of Grahamstown and
UPM enough to engage with them about either the murders or the possibility of
xenophobic attacks. Meanwhile, students have been injured while fleeing from
police at EMC.
The police clearly do not
serve the community. They have demonstrated that their only function is to
control the community. Rather than listening to the people, working to hold the
community together, and preventing the xenophobic attacks, the police responded
as armed enforcers once violence had already broken out, shops had been ruined
and robbed, and the community endangered. The urgency with which police hurried
to corral the protesting student contrasts starkly with their initial response
to violent looters – whom they let go to continue looting in the township.
Equipment such as the
armoured water cannon signifies the intent and function of the police not as
community members but as community controllers.
The last time the water
cannon that was used against students on Monday came to Grahamstown from East
London was in August, during a peaceful protest organised by UPM against
corruption in the municipality. That day, armoured police vehicles were arrayed
in force across High Street in front of City Hall, and police in riot gear
formed a cordon blocking the building’s entrance. Ironically, the very people
who had to march up to those armed police to protest against municipal crime
had to protect local people in spite of the police when the attacks began on
Wednesday. They were the same people who had had the community’s safety in mind
for more than a week before the attacks while the police had been indifferent.
The spate of police
violence against protesting students across the country, including in
Grahamstown on Monday, does not demonstrate the extent to which police have
failed their communities. Indeed, the repression of student protests conceals
the greater failures while contributing to them. In Grahamstown, as police
waste their time intimidating, chasing, and shooting at young black students
protesting in a wealthy quarter of town, they ignore the legitimate fears of
township residents and allow preventable violence to ruin people’s lives.
