According to UFS’ management, for an off-campus residence, to be accredited by the university it needs to meet the minimum requirements for student accommodation as outlined by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas) for funding via the students.

The residence in Botjabela Village where the attack took place was only verified but not accredited.

The UFS says in a briefing held on Wednesday that they verify off-campus accommodation to account for their students, but verified premises’ don’t always meet the requirements for accreditation. Despite this it appears police are hot on the heels of a breakthrough in the matter.

Free State police investigating a possible link between a house robbery that took place in Phamong Village on Monday as well as the brutal attack on a group of University of the Free State (UFS) students in in Botjhabela Village the week prior.  Major General Arthur Adams, announced that the modus operandi in both crimes was similar and as such a link was being investigated.

In both instances cash, laptops and cell phones were demanded by the assailants. It is revealed that in the second house robbery which occurred in Phamong Village five days after the one on the students, two of the three suspects sustained gunshot wounds in a tussle with one of the victims and as such are receiving medical treatment under guard at a local hospital in the Eastern Free State. General Adams elaborates on the nationalities of the suspects under guard/in custody. 

“I can confirm that the two suspects under police guard for the second incident are Lesotho nationals, but were residing in the area for some time, when the incidents occurred” explains Adams.

A third University of the Free State student is still recovering at the Mofumahadi Manapo Regional hospital from last week’s attack by four gun-wielding masked men. The other casualty in the first attack was a student from Maluti Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college. The deceased from UFS have been identified as first-year social science student Sigcino Zimba, originally from KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and second-year administration student Thabani Manqele, also from KZN.

The incident led to a scathing reaction from the South African Union of Students (SAUS). The SAUS national spokesperson and former Student Representative Council (SRC) president at the UFS, Asive Dlanjwa, says “the reality is that the death of these students further highlights the devastating state of student accommodation in the South African Higher Education sector, particularly off-campus or private student accommodation.

“In fact, the lack of adequate housing in the sector, by implication, makes the department of higher education and universities co-conspirators in senseless killings of students. On average, universities have only been able to accommodate less than 20% of students in safe and acceptable student accommodation, leaving around 80% of them with non-affordable and atrocious living conditions, exposing them to interminable criminal elements. The recent killing of Nosicelo at the University of Fort Hare could also be directly attributed to the abhorrent state of student accommodation within the broader Higher Education Sector,” Dlanjwa adds.

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