ÌÇÐÄVlog

The flames that devoured the University of Fort Hare¡¯s administration buildings last week did not just consume bricks and mortar.

Students who the university¡¯s main Alice Campus succeeded in incinerating R500 million (?22 million) worth of potential: exam results locked in filing cabinets, services that might have processed thousands of student queries, futures for a nation with 62.4 per cent youth unemployment.

Four buildings in total have been reduced to ash. Students have been injured in clashes with security. The historic campus has been evacuated. And here is the uncomfortable question nobody wants to ask: what if we have normalised destruction as dialogue?

Vice-chancellor Sakhela Buhlungu declared that the destruction showed ¡°much bigger issues, with a significant component of sponsored violence and criminality¡±. Student leader Asonele Magwaxaza countered that students were angry and ¡°frustrated because they have been suppressed¡± by management. Higher education minister Buti Manamela ¡°actions that rob future generations of learning opportunities and divert scarce resources from improving the quality of education¡±. Yet these statements, issued from different corners of the conflict, speak past one another, while the flames speak for everyone.

Fort Hare joins a grim tradition stretching back to 2015, when Fees Must Fall protests resulted in R787 million in damages across 13 universities. North-West University¡¯s Mafikeng campus alone suffered R198 million in losses after fires gutted key infrastructure. The University of Johannesburg watched its auditorium burn: R144 million gone. At the University of KwaZulu-Natal, R100 million up in smoke; at the University of the Western Cape, R68 million. The pattern repeats itself with terrifying predictability: grievance, protest, escalation, fire, temporary closure, hollow promises, repeat.

Let us ask the difficult questions that make everyone squirm. To university leadership: when did you last conduct genuine mediation sessions with students before tensions reached boiling point? Not public relations exercises, not token consultations, but real engagement using structured conflict resolution frameworks?

In a condemning the destruction, Parliament¡¯s Portfolio Committee on ÌÇÐÄVlog proclaimed itself disturbed by ¡°messages that university management has suspended elected student leaders and replaced them with their own appointed leaders¡±. And the committee is right to feel that way. If the ¡°messages¡± are true, what mediator approved this substitution of democratic representation with administrative fiat?

To students: if every aggrieved group torched buildings, would there be anything left to fight for? Lucia Matomane, the United Democratic Student Movement¡¯s Eastern Cape provincial chairperson, that ¡°students have long raised concerns about governance failures, delayed or inconsistent [student representative council] elections, financial exclusions, and an institutional culture that too often treats them as subjects rather than partners in higher education.¡± But she is right that grievances, however legitimate, do not justify petrol bombs ¨C and that ¡°the destruction of property and endangerment of lives¡± drags back the ¡°struggle for a just and accountable university system¡±.

Consider the mathematics of negligence. R500 million could fund full scholarships for approximately 3,000 students for one year. It could build state-of-the-art residences, laboratories or lecture halls. Instead, it is ash. But the real tragedy arising from the mayhem is not just the physical damage. It is that we have accepted protest-to-destruction as standard operating procedure. While Fort Hare burns, all stakeholders issue statements without addressing why mediation failed ¨C or, more accurately, why it was never seriously attempted.

So, to government: why does higher education lack anything comparable to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), which handles workplace disputes with systematic protocols? The Labour Relations Act provides clear escalation pathways: consultation, mediation by third parties, conciliation before arbitration. These are not perfect, but they prevent most conflicts from becoming violent. Why have we not adapted this for campus conflicts?

The CCMA model demonstrates that binding mediation works when all parties face consequences for refusing to engage. What consequences exist for university administrators who dismiss student concerns until buildings burn? What accountability do student leaders face for encouraging actions that destroy the very infrastructure they need?

Minister Manamela implored ¡°all students and stakeholders to refrain from violence, intimidation, and damage to property¡± and to help ¡°protect the University of Fort Hare¡¯s proud legacy through dialogue, discipline, and collective responsibility¡±. But dialogue requires infrastructure. It requires all stakeholders to sit in uncomfortable rooms with trained, independent mediators authorised to enforce agreements.

Fort Hare¡¯s flames illuminate a choice. We can continue this cycle of frustration-fuelled destruction, with each generation of students inheriting damaged campuses and diminished opportunities. Or we can mandate proper conflict resolution systems modelled on CCMA protocols: early intervention before tensions escalate, independent mediation with enforcement mechanisms, transparent timelines that prevent administrators from exploiting student patience, and genuine consequences for all parties who refuse to engage constructively.

The cost of ignorance is not measured only in repair bills. It is measured in lost academic years, in students who never graduate, in a generation that learns that destruction speaks louder than dialogue. Can we really afford to pay that price?

Pikolomzi Qaba is a PhD scholar at a South African university and works in communications in a government entity.