Wits hopefuls 'forced' to sleep in toilets

For the two days before he was provided with temporary accommodation his bed was a chair in a campus restaurant. Image by: Gallo Images/City Press/Yandisa Monakali

Dlamini said the SRC spent over R10,000 on accommodation and food for stranded students in January.

He added that out-of-town students who came to the city to write supplementary exams, as well as students who are appealing their academic exclusion did not normally have accommodation.

Dlamini said: "Our people are living like animals. It gets worse every year."

Dlamini said that through most of January, the SRC had fought a daily battle to find students a place to sleep.

Many desperate students had little other option, claimed Dlamini, but to sleep in university libraries, toilets, offices, clubhouses, and residence rooms under renovation.

Nicholas Mhlabane, a prospective electrical engineering student, travelled over 300km from his Mpumalanga home to Wits.

For the two days before he was provided with temporary accommodation his bed was a chair in a campus restaurant.

Said Mhlabane: "I got cramps, no matter what position I tried to sleep in. But I kept reminding myself to be patient."

He was forced to return home this weekend after being told his on-line application was incorrectly submitted last year.

Mhlabane's matric results were 86% for Maths, 66% for Life Orientation, 75% for SeSwati, 64% for Physical Science, 63% for Agricultural Sciences, and 62% for both Life Sciences and English.