The haunting images of smoke rising from the University of Fort Hare this past week will linger in our collective memory for years to come. Historic buildings, some recently renovated at great cost, were brutally gutted by flames, a violent climax to student protests.
In true form of student politics that started with one thing, and grew into rage, ended in a blaze of destruction, leaving behind ashes, broken dreams, and an uneasy silence settling over a once vibrant campus.
The shocks at Fort Hare are not isolated. Already, signs of unrest are surfacing elsewhere. The University of the Free State has reported incidents of vandalism, a chilling reminder of how quickly disruption spreads across the higher education sector.
In SA’s student protest history, one campus fire often becomes a spark that travels, igniting frustration in universities miles apart. What begins as a localised grievance can rapidly turn into a national wave of shutdowns, torchings, and suspended academic programmes, leaving a trail of devastation that takes months, and sometimes years, to recover from.
When one institution burns, the sector trembles; when two burn, the entire system stands on the brink of a tidal wave that threatens the academic futures of thousands.
As students made their way off campus after the administration shut down operations, I could not shake off a deep and familiar sadness. The sight of young people carrying their belongings, their faces filled with anger, disappointment, and uncertainty, reminded me of another South African scene we know too well – the image of families fleeing burning homes in the townships.
But I also remember a municipal building going up in flames, taking with it historical records of Khuma township, such as property ownership documents, grave numbers, and community archives. To this day, many families still cannot trace the graves of their loved ones because those records were lost to fire.
SA has a long and complicated relationship with fire. During the anti-apartheid struggle, fire became both a symbol and a weapon. Petrol bombs were hurled at state vehicles and municipal offices by a generation that felt unseen and unheard. Fire was the cry of the oppressed, a way to declare: “If you do not hear us, you will see us.”
It was a weapon of the powerless, an emotional vocabulary used against a system that spoke the language of force. Though today’s fires at Fort Hare were not acts of armed resistance, they echo that history. Fire still speaks when people feel they are not being listened to.
Fort Hare is not an ordinary institution. It is a cradle of African leadership, a place that shaped Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Robert Mugabe, Julius Nyerere, Chris Hani, and many others.
To set fire to its lecture halls, libraries, and heritage buildings is to burn more than infrastructure. It is to burn memory, sacrifice, and collective pride. Some of the damaged structures had recently been renovated using public funds that could have expanded student support or learning facilities elsewhere.
Watching students walking away from campus in silence was like watching dreams being suspended. For many parents and guardians, sending a child to university is a sacred offering. Some sell livestock, take informal loans with huge interest, or use their pension savings just to secure a place in higher education for their children.
When students return home not because they failed academically but because the institution could not continue under the weight of conflict, the psychological and financial trauma cuts deep.
It is easy to condemn from a distance. Yet condemnation alone achieves nothing. We must ask the hard question: what brings young people to a point where fire feels like the only language left? Universities should be sanctuaries of thought and innovation, yet they are also spaces where inequality, exclusion, and slow bureaucratic violence simmer into anger.
Every year, the cycle repeats, protests ignite, negotiations stall, buildings burn, and the academic calendar collapses. But the root issues such as funding, hunger, housing, delayed disbursements, and administrative coldness remain unresolved. The violence of fire often begins with the quiet violence of neglect.
What keeps me awake is the fear that these fires, if left unexplained and unaddressed, will one day burn us all. We risk becoming a nation that normalises flames as a response, until eventually, there is nothing left to burn but hope itself. A country that speaks too often through fire eventually finds itself gathering and speaking only in ashes.
And yet, I refuse to believe that this is where the story ends. SA has risen from far worse. Fort Hare itself has survived many storms and can rise again. Students, despite everything, still carry within them the flame of possibility.
Let this moment be more than another entry in the archives of destruction. Fort Hare must rise again, not only in brick and stone but in spirit.
- Hatang is the executive director of Re Hata Mmoho
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.