Guests and the audience arriving for the concert, were manhandled, shoved by the student protesters and utterly traumatised - some were in tears and shaking.
What values do we espouse at Wits? We talk glibly about freedom to express oneself. A protest does not mean freedom to smash windows to get into the basement, nor does it mean breaking the door to the Atrium, so that a mob can break through into the hall where a civilised classical music concert was in progress.
The music department was assured that the public and the students at the concert would be protected. A group of wellmeaning but utterly helpless security guards could not control the mob.
Our music students were traumatised by the swearing, threats and intimidations in the Atrium when the mob burst in screaming and with vuvuzelas and went berserk.
Is this the kind of freedom for which Wits stands? Is this the kind of message that Wits sends out to the public - that if we don’t like something we are entitled to disrupt and destroy it? Of course the concert had to stop. This was not a political rally - it was a concert.
The haters, naturally, are being brought up on charges by the university for their crimes. But their comrades seem to feel that violently stopping a pianist from playing is considered "free speech" and is something to be admired!
From Business Day Live (South Africa:)
CONGRESS of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi on Friday added to a call for the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) to drop charges of violating its code of conduct against students who disrupted a concert by an Israeli pianist.In Vavi's memo, we see a master of Orwellian rhetroric:
Hundreds of protesters gathered on the Wits campus in Johannesburg on Friday to demand that the university’s management call off disciplinary hearings, scheduled for next week, against 11 current and former members of its Students’ Representative Council (SRC) who disrupted an on-campus concert by Israeli pianist Yossi Reshef in March.
The concert, which took place during international "Israeli Apartheid Week", was cancelled after 15 minutes after students from, among other organisations, the SRC and the African National Congress Youth League took to the stage in solidarity with Palestinians.
Speaking at the protest, Mr Vavi said that former president Nelson Mandela "would be shocked to hear that students were harassed and now charged by this university". Wits had a proud history of not being intimidated by the apartheid regime and now risked being an instrument of "Zionist racists", he said.
Protesters on Friday handed over a memorandum demanding an immediate end to the charges to Wits management.
We stand here, in a free, democratic and post-apartheid South Africa, to affirm our unequivocal support for the right of all people to engage in peaceful resistance in defence of their rights and those of others.Get that? Israelis, and Zionists, have no right to speech, to play music publicly or indeed to be treated like human beings. The students who broke through police lines, broke windows and doors to force themselves in, violently disrupted the concert, intimidated the audience and guests, and terrorized the artist should not only not be charged - they should be admired! But they must not suffer any consequences for breaking the law. That would be wrong.
We therefore condemn in the strongest terms the fact that Wits University has charged 11 students (9 of them SRC Members) for participating in an SRC-led protest at the Israeli Embassy-sponsored piano concert in which an Israeli (publicly admitted Zionist) was performing. [The concert was not sponsored by the Israel Embassy, by the way - EoZ]
This concert, and the protest, happened during the Israeli Apartheid Week campaign, which the SRC participated in and endorses. Now, the charges have left our comrades in great fear of being expelled and thus losing their careers. Students learn not only academically, but also through their active participation in extra-mural and political or social mobilisation for the cause of the greater society in which they live. They can't isolate themselves from the conditions surrounding them and their people, within and outside their own immediate boundaries.
The university seeks to demobilize the growing BDS movement and opposition to its silence and complicity with Israel and its actions. We should applaud the student leadership of their bravery and conviction to defend and fight for justice, in particular their opposition to Israeli Apartheid, and voicing their frustration when any complicity is shown by the university authorities on their own campus.
We condemn the university's response of targeting student leadership by charging them. This is not only wrong and undermines the fundamental right to protest, but an indication that the university dismisses the legitimate claims and demands of the students.
How liberal!
Luckily, some students at Wits are not falling for this hypocrisy:
Dear Wits StudentWe live in a Bizarro world where up is down, black is white, free speech is oppression and violent oppression is freedom.
I love my University , but I do not love what is happening to it.....
I love my University so much I spent two years homeless and hungry trying to raise money to continue my education, and now I am worried about this great institution, I am sure you are too....
The student representative council, has chosen to ignore the 'R' in SRC, they have chosen to turn our University into their political playground at the expense of our issues.
To be blunt, I do not care about Israel and or Palestine, I am a hungry poor black man and I have more immediate issues that bother me, issues like my inability to buy text books, my inability to raise printing money, issues such as the crowded libraries with few computers, issues such as the Kudu buck machines with no coin slots for the poor students.
I have not heard the SRC speak of these issues for the past three months, all they have been making noise about is the Israel Palestine issue, which is not immediate to me.
Other students have different issues,...
Today the SRC tells us they are fighting for us, for the right to protest, yet the truth is they are telling half the story. They may have a right to protest, but the jewish students also have a right to congregate without being bullied or disrupted. JEWS ARE STUDENTS TOO, THEY DESERVE REPRESENTATION TOO....
Representation requires listening and speaking for all students!
The SRC is not the toy of political parties to be used to divide us and to advance your personal ambition. Your job is not to serve some of us , but all of us.
You do not represent yourselves, or only the palestinian students, your job is to represent all of us....and you have not done that. ...
As a student I feel unrepresented by you, I feel ignored by you, but more importantly I feel like you have come to harm the institution I have sweated blood and tears to be a part of....
You have eroded unity, you have disrupted peaceful gatherings and caused commotion at our University....and you have done this in my name as a student....but I NEVER GAVE YOU PERMISSION TO ....
With love
a Concerned Wits student
I have a feeling that the students will not be punished at all. Bullying Jews and Zionists will be considered a human right in parts of South Africa.
Kristallnacht cannot be far behind.
(h/t StevenZ)