CPUT and the recurring politics of ungovernability

The entrance to a CPUT building burns during protests at its Bellville campus in October 2016. Two security guards suffered smoke inhalation after allegedly being locked inside; both later recovered. Photo: Supplied via GroundUp.

The photograph above is not from the current unrest at CPUT. It was taken in October 2016, when the entrance to a building at the university’s Bellville campus was set alight and two security guards suffered smoke inhalation after allegedly being locked inside. Both survived.

A decade later, the image feels current. That is the point.

The latest crisis at CPUT is not an isolated eruption. It sits within a recurring pattern of student grievance, institutional failure, shutdown, confrontation, destruction and temporary settlement. Trace that pattern further back and the echo becomes heavier.

Students mobilise. Lectures stop. Security moves in. Buildings burn. The institution becomes contested territory, and each side claims the moral authority to act.

South Africans know this script. In the 1980s, students confronted an education system deliberately designed to reproduce racial domination. Boycotts and shutdowns formed part of a broader strategy to make an illegitimate state ungovernable.

CPUT in 2026 is not the apartheid state. But political methods often survive the conditions that produced them. The shutdown remains part of our political repertoire. So does the belief that disruption is the only language institutions understand. The moral memory of liberation still hangs over these actions, even when the institution, objective and consequences have changed.

We should be careful, however, not to see this through one lens. It is easy to see violent students destroying an institution they need. It is equally easy to see poor students confronting an unresponsive university. We could blame NSFAS, weak management, political opportunism or the wider failure of South Africa’s higher education system.

Each accoun tcontains something true. None is enough.

I write this with some sympathy for CPUT management. I lectured there. I understand the weight universities carry.

They are expected to widen access, protect academic standards, accommodate and support students, absorb failures elsewhere in the state, keep campuses safe and remain financially viable. Public funding does not match the obligations placed on them. At the same time, universities face growing pressure to generate third-stream income simply to sustain the institution. That is a heavy load.

But sympathy cannot become institutional innocence.

Universities have always been politically contested spaces. Councils, executive appointments, procurement, residences, security contracts and institutional resources attract factions and interests. Decisions can become political, defensive and, at times, corrupt.

The language of governance and financial sustainability can obscure who holds power, who benefits and how decisions are really made.

The same scrutiny must be applied to student politics.

The grievances at CPUT appear substantial. Student debt, accommodation, registration payments, academic administration, access to transcripts and NSFAS funding limits determine whether a poor student can remain at university and convert a qualification into work.

But structural injustice does not absolve conduct.

Students have the right to protest peacefully. They do not have the right to force classmates out of lectures, attack people or burn shared infrastructure. Poverty does not remove agency. A legitimate cause does not make every act committed under its banner legitimate.

A crowd also creates opportunity. Responsibility becomes blurred. People with unrelated motives join. Militancy attracts attention. Leaders gain political authority from escalation while the wider student body carries the academic and financial cost.

An SRC cannot claim the power generated by a shutdown and disclaim every consequence. Leadership means establishing a mandate, protecting students who do not participate and isolating those who use the protest for intimidation or destruction.

The timing matters too. The crisis is unfolding shortly before municipal and SRC elections. That does not prove political orchestration. It does mean that visibility, militancy and forced concessions carry electoral value. Genuine grievances and political opportunism can occupy the same space.

Business cannot stand outside this compact either. Employers complain about skills shortages while investing too little in completion, workplace experience and the transition into employment. They benefit from the graduates public institutions produce but allow the state, universities, students and families to carry most of the risk.

So what is actually happening at CPUT? Government has expanded access without building a stable funding system beneath it. Universities carry obligations they are not adequately resourced to meet, while their internal politics and commercial pressures complicate how they respond. Student leaders represent real grievances but operate in an environment that rewards escalation. Individuals can exploit the anonymity of the crowd. Business consumes the output while remaining distant from the crisis. Each actor points towards the failure of another. That is the collapse of the higher education compact.

The lesson from the 1980s is not that disruption is always legitimate because it carries the language of struggle. Nor is it that order must be restored at any cost.

The lesson is that education is inseparable from power.

The task today is different. It is no longer to make an illegitimate system ungovernable. It is to make democratic institutions governable on fairer terms. That requires management to account for how power is exercised. Government must fund the access it promises. Student leaders must carry responsibility for their methods. Individuals must answer for violence. Business must invest in the skills pipeline from which it benefits.

If we see only violent students, security becomes the only answer. If we see only structural injustice, accountability disappears.

The truth sits in the uncomfortable space between them.