Taken from the collective Disrupting Whitness: UCT "ON #SHACKVILLE: The physical violence, chaos and destruction that accompanied the demolition of #Shackville were deeply traumatic, and in a context where the situation could have been defused and the physical integrity of students respected, management acted out a reprisal that resulted in a radical escalation of the conflict. #Shackville represented a deep threat to the wellbeing of poor, black students, but action taken by management put the wellbeing of even more students in jeopardy. As a visceral intervention, #Shackville made UCT’s housing crisis visible (as it should be), and took many UCT students out of their comfort zones and into a place of engagement. Without #Shackville, we would not have come to know that students are held in transit accommodation where 40-50 people share a bathroom. We would not have known that students are forced to roam the streets as seven days a week, as this accommodation is locked from 7am-5pm. UCT’s reasons for ordering the removal or movement of #Shackville are deeply unconvincing. Inconvenience to pedestrians and traffic are simply not of the same severity as the housing crisis and other structural problems, as we saw last year. But as was the case with the shutdown, we see swift and forceful action to dispel minor inconveniences while the challenges faced by poor, black students are addressed only when the institution has no other option. The demolition of a vital intervention and commentary in the name of continuing UCT operations reveals with incisive irony how those operations are hand-in-hand with whiteness and trample black, working-class students underfoot. The reality is that operations continuing as normal means students continue to be housed in crowded, insufficient rooms, and this crisis made invisible. Last year management took the route of police intervention on campus backed by an interdict and later recognised this as a complete mis-handling of the situation. We’re deeply concerned to see UCT taking the same path today. #SolidarityWithShackville #The17thRespondent"
