This article may contain graphic and/or adult content unsuitable for minors and sensitive readers.
Political parties and student organisations have condemned the Walter Sisulu University's decision to indefinitely close.
Administrator Lourens van Staden says students had been told to vacate the university, with campuses in East London, Butterworth and Mthatha, by noon on Wednesday due to labour issues.
The Pan Africanist Congress in the Eastern Cape says it is absurd that Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande has not intervened in the five-week long labour impasse.
The Congress of the People Student Movement has called for an immediate intervention at the university, which serves some of the country's poorest communities.
The SA Students' Congress says it is disgusted at the decision to close the university.
On Tuesday, Walter Sisulu spokesperson Angela Church defended the decision to send the student's home.
She said student's were becoming increasingly frustrated and the last straw was on Monday evening when students were hit by police rubber bullets during a protest.
She said the University was not prepared to expose its students to an unsafe situation.
Meanwhile, South African universities are well behind countries such as the United States and numerous European countries on tertiary level, where inter-nationalisation in the modern format is on-going.
Dr. Jimmy Ellis, International Consultant at the Central University of Technology, says however that inter-nationalisation is not foreign to Africa.
He says some of the earliest established universities on the continent were practically clones of those of the British.
