A mass meeting at the NMMU indoor sports centre on the Port Elizabeth university's south campus degenerated into a racial war of words at the weekend.
Hundreds of concerned students, parents and staff packed the venue for the meeting which was called by the NMMU SRC to try and find a way forward in the free tertiary education issue which has seen the varsity closed for more than a week.
SRC President Nicolas Nyati told AlgoaFM News that the meeting immediately got off on the wrong note when protesting students demanded that parents leave the venue.
Nyati says once the parents had left, the meeting derailed into a racial issue between black and white students and the core issue of debating free education and the re-opening of the university was not even discussed properly.
Nyati says the SRC was very disappointed at the outcome as they'd created that platform with the hope of finding solutions that would benefit both the protesting students and those who wanted to return to class.
He says they could not reach their objectives and that NMMU will thus remain closed for now. Nyati flies out to Johannesburg on Sunday night and is hoping something positive will come out of a meeting of all SRC Presidents on Monday morning with President Jacob Zuma and Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande.
