False social media post blamed for varsity chaos

Report also blames role of untrained police officers

- By Queenin Masuabi

Fourteen Walter Sisulu University students were injured during the protest that turned violent.

A misleading social-media post claiming that several students had been killed at Walter Sisulu University (WSU) ignited a chaotic confrontation between the students and law enforcement agencies.

This is one of the findings contained in the report of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), which had been tasked with investigating the unrest at the Eastern Cape university last year.

During the unrest, 14 students were injured, three of them seriously, in shootings where live ammunition could have been used.

The report states that the false post was the trigger of the bloody unrest.

It included a video clip of automatic rifle fire from an unrelated past incident, yet many students interpreted it as proof that their classmates had been fatally shot. This sparked fear, which spread like wildfire across the campus.

"We saw the post and thought our friends had been shot. Everyone was running and screaming; it was chaos," one student told the commission.