The University of Fort Hare has offered counselling to its distraught security staff which is struggling to deal with yet another loss of their colleague at the weekend.
A 33-year-old who would have been a key witness in a murder case of his colleagues, died in a suspicious car crash on Sunday when a bakkie drove into his vehicle along Cambridge Road in King William’s Town, Eastern Cape, leading to his instant death.
Although Sowetan has established the man’s identity, however the university asked for it to be withheld until the family has viewed his body. The family and the university staff are expected to meet today.
University spokesperson JP Roodt told Sowetan that they met with security staff to reassure them and offered them psychosocial support.
“We understand their jobs are not easy and they are putting their lives on the line and so the meeting was for us to show them that we acknowledge and understand that they are working under abnormal situation and circumstance. The mood was sombre. They are very committed to our renewal programme of rooting out corruption and restoring the dignity of this university, which vice-chancellor Prof Sakhela Buhlungu started when he joined the university,” said Roodt.
Since his arrival at the institution in 2016, Buhlungu has uncovered a lot of corruption and fraud implicating the university’s managers and executives. The university has been working with the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to clamp down on tender corruption, the suspicious awarding of honours degrees and the mismanagement of funds at the institution. These investigations have also placed Buhlungu’s life at risk.
In January this year, another one of Buhlungu’s bodyguards, Mboneli Vesele, was killed in what was dubbed an attempt on the VC’s life, fire was opened on the pair just outside Buhlungu’s house at the Alice staff campus. Last year in May, UFH’s fleet manager, Petrus Roets was shot and killed in his car at the Gonubie off-ramp outside East London.
It is believed that the latest employee to be killed would have been a key witness in both these cases following an arrest of five people for the murders and attempted murder of Buhlungu.
“The VC is not going to be intimidated. The university is at the forefront of fighting corruption and people think taking out the VC would stop his mission and it won’t. He is a courageous man who wants to turn Fort Hare to being the institution that embodies black intellectuals,” said Roodt.
A source at the university told Sowetan that the university has received information on a caucus meeting between previous employees and administrators that took place in Mthatha weeks prior the latest incident.
She said there were high profile staff members that would be implicated once investigations by the SIU are completed.
“The outcomes are going to lead to a political instability in the province. The university also received information that a senior executive in the executive committee was in this meeting.
Sowetan understands that the victim was aspirant businessman in East London who owned a pub and had just started small-scale farming.
The deceased’s cousin said his relative was a people’s person. He was very kind and also business-minded.
“He has a son, 6, that he is leaving behind.”
Roodt described the deceased as ‘warmest person under the sun’.
“Whenever you saw he smiled. He was always energetic and positive.”
The deceased joined the university in 2013 as a driver and was later promoted to being a bodyguard in the university’s security department.
Police minister Bheki Cele said police were investigating culpable homicide. “While we don’t have evidence that suggest that there may have been foul play, we are looking deeper. It would be foolish of us not to look into the other part because he [deceased] was a key witness,” said Cele.
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