Outrage at violence: UCT to protest at Wednesday's march

We say enough to violent crime, especially against women and children.

This is the rallying cry in the joint communiqué to the UCT community, issued by Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price and president of the Students' Representative Council (SRC) Lorne Hallendorff.

The communiqué invites the university community to join a protest march on campus on Wednesday 20 February at 13h00, from middle campus to the Jammie Plaza.

The decision follows several tragic incidents in recent weeks involving crimes against women. UCT students have already voiced their concerns about the high levels of crime and violence against women at a candlelight vigil, held by the SRC, on 12 February.

The communiqué from Price and Hallendorff reads: "These crimes highlight the stark reality that our constitutional right to be safe in our homes and communities is breached hundreds of times every day, particularly for women and girls."

UCT's outrage and recommendations for a consolidated government response were addressed in an article in the most recent Mail & Guardian Online, titled The State of the Violent Nation, by Price and Guy Lamb, director of UCT's Safety & Violence Institute (SaVI).

Academics are encouraged to wear their gowns for the march and other community members are asked to dress in white to express solidarity in demanding a South Africa unstained by violence.

UCT will use the occasion also to remember students and colleagues who lost their lives to crime in recent years.

Bayanda Baba, a UCT business science student, was fatally shot in January 2013 during an attempted robbery in Gugulethu. In 2010, Gail Benting, a nurse with UCT's SA Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative, was strangled to death outside Robertson.

Three years ago student Dominic Giddy died of stab wounds sustained during a robbery attempt in Observatory. In 2009 first-year medical student Benny Pakiso Maqobane was shot dead near his digs in Observatory.

Science education professor, Kevin Rochford, was shot in his driveway in little Mowbray in 2008. Commercial law professor, Mike Larkin, was murdered in Rondebosch in 2007, while walking home in broad daylight.

At Wednesday's march the UCT community will speak out about government's responsibility to investigate such crimes speedily, to prosecute the criminals successfully and, more importantly, to build a society that is free from violence; a society where UCT students and staff can travel safely to work and class and can live without fear in their homes and communities.

Through SaVI, UCT is mobilising research into the causes of violent crime and its possible solutions, drawn from across its academic faculties and also from other South African universities and research groups. This body of research has been offered to the government and UCT is working with local government to mobilise forums, interventions and other programmes to assist in fighting crime.

The schedule on 20 February is:

12h45: Leave your classrooms and offices and make your way to the Sculpture Garden next to the Kramer Building on middle campus, between Masingene and the New Economics Building.

13h00: March heads up through the tunnel under the highway, across rugby fields and up the stairs to Jammie Plaza.

13h20: Assembly begins on Jammie Plaza