The students have completed the theoretical portion of their studies, but due to Covid-19 were unable to undertake the 4000 hours of clinical work required by the South African Nursing Council (SANC). 

A source has anonymously informed OFM News that Fort Hare management promises to come back to students on Thursday 1 April regarding the forced re-registrations. The institution is yet to comment on media-related enquiries. On Monday, the affected nursing students, represented by varying student unions, shut down parts of the institution in East London to get management to meet students halfway on the contentious issue.

The bulk of the nursing students have already received employment offers – for their community service year - from hospitals and clinics in the country, and are meant to respond to the offers by 1 April. This has effectively placed them in a predicament. 

SRC East London Campus Premier, Sibusiso Zonke, blames the institution for the debacle in a memorandum of demands, adding that they never allocated the students these “missing clinical hours” and declined suggestions that the students should moonlight to make up for the time missed.

The solution proposed by Zonke in the memorandum is that the practical classes completed by the nursing class on online platform Blackboard in 2020, as well as laboratory hours, must be counted towards the SANC clinical hours. Furthermore, he says the nursing department at the institution must acknowledge their failure to allocate the clinical hours in 2020 and provide a catch-up plan that will “not jeopardise the chances of students starting with their community service in April”. Time, however, doesn’t appear to be on the institution’s side on the issue.

Meanwhile, the students cannot be accommodated on campus because it's already full and they are also not receiving any funding from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) to cover the living expenses for the extra academic year. The incident comes on the back of reports by the Daily Dispatch that a 25-year-old third-year student at the institution, originally from Zimbabwe, is now suing the university for over R5 million after he was deregistered and encountered issues pertaining to the clinical hours mentioned above.

OFM News