.png)
100 signatures reached
To: UN WOMEN Executive Director, Dr Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
UN WOMEN must recall Professor Adam Habib as United Nations #HeForShe IMPACT Champion.
This campaign has ended.
As the distressed and traumatised black womxn students of Wits University, we would like to call for the recalling of Vice Chancellor Professor Adam Habib as a United Nations #HeForShe IMPACT Champion.
The Wits University Senior Management Team led by Professor Adam Habib has taken upon themselves to deploy heavily armed private security and police on our campus, in addition to enabling the sexual violation of black womxn students in the day-to-day activities of the University.
We note the complicity of Prof. Adam Habib whom you have appointed as a United Nations (UN) #HeForShe Impact Champion who has committed amongst other things to “develop a comprehensive system to report, predict, prevent, and address gender-based harm on Wits’ University campus”.
With regards to the issue of sexual harassment by private security and police, this has been brought to the attention of the Vice Chancellor and University management several times throughout the year. Along with the harassment of womxn students by staff, and fellow students enabled by the non-combative nature of sexual violence policies and procedures in place within the University.
Earlier in the year, when private security were brought onto campuses black female students raised the issue with management through a petition signed by over 500 Wits students and academics raising awareness about the “alleged” sexual harassment of students by private security guards. A memorandum was given to the University in this regard and was received by Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Tawana Kupe on behalf of the University’s Senior Executive Team. However, private security was not withdrawn from University premises.
We also called for the Vice Chancellor in his many capacities as UKZN alumni, #HeForShe IMPACT Champion and Chairperson of Universities South Africa to intervene at UKZN when a black womxn student was raped by a policeman, who too was allowed on campus by the University.
We thus bring this matter of militarization of our University campuses to the attention of the office of UN Women because we believe that as an “IMPACT champion” Professor Adam Habib has failed in his mandate to “develop a comprehensive system to report, predict, prevent, and address gender-based harm on Wits University campuses.”
We would thus call for the intervention of the United Nations Women in the two (2) following ways:
1) Recalling of Professor Adam Habib as a United Nations #HeForShe impact champion.
2) Intervention to end the militarization of Wits University and other campuses in South Africa by calling for the removal of private security and the South African Police Service.
The failure of UN Women to act on these demands would be interpreted as the endorsement of actions by the University to undermine gender equity and the protection of young women in South Africa and globally.
Why is this important?
The presence of police and private security on campus has led to increase in violence. Both protesting and non-protesting black students, staff and general workers have not been protected by the private security and police as the university SET would claim. Instead we have witnessed a re-emergence of racial profiling characterised by direct targeting of black students or staff members whether protesting or not.
The police and private security continue to harass and shoot at any black person who walks on campus. This has resulted in the exclusion of the black child from what is supposedly “a resumption of the academic programme” under a militarised university environment.
Black students and workers on this and other campuses across the country have been brutalised by an assortment of tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and unlawful arrests. Black womxn students and workers in particular have been affected by the police brutality through widespread sexual harassment and vulnerability in the face of heavy-handed police action.
In thinking about the militarization of our campuses and the unpunished sexual harassment, we are left making links to the University's’ actions and the ways in which rape is often used as a military tactic. We are left to conclude that sexual harassment is indeed part of the way in which both protesting and non-protesting black bodies will be disciplined and terrorized into submission by Universities.