A misleading social-media post claiming that several students had been killed at Walter Sisulu University (WSU) ignited a chaotic confrontation between the students and law enforcement agencies.
This is one of the findings contained in the report of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), which had been tasked with investigating the unrest at the Eastern Cape university last year.
During the unrest, 14 students were injured, three of them seriously, in shootings where live ammunition could have been used.
The report states that the false post was the trigger of the bloody unrest.
It included a video clip of automatic rifle fire from an unrelated past incident, yet many students interpreted it as proof that their classmates had been fatally shot. This sparked fear, which spread like wildfire across the campus.
“We saw the post and thought our friends had been shot. Everyone was running and screaming; it was chaos,” one student told the commission.
Another added: “I just wanted to know if anyone was alive. I didn’t even think about the police; I just ran.”
The students had originally gathered to submit a memorandum of grievances to university management.
Their demands addressed longstanding issues, including housing shortages, delayed funding, and broader institutional neglect. Many stressed that the protest was intended to remain peaceful.
“We just wanted to be heard,” one student said. “We weren’t looking for a fight; we wanted solutions.”
However, the panic created by the false social-media post quickly escalated.
As the students moved toward the nearby N2 highway, the students encountered units of the South African Police Service, who, according to the SAHRC, were not trained for public-order policing.
Students reported that even those who were seated or retreating were struck by police force.
“I was on the ground when the bullets came. I thought I was going to die. We were only sitting and asking to be heard,” a student testified.
The confrontation led to 14 individuals being hospitalised, nine of them students, and three suffering life-threatening injuries.
The report also highlighted systemic failures.
The university did not activate mediation channels, private security engaged in unlawful crowd control, and SAPS deployed untrained units in a volatile situation.
Students voiced their frustration clearly: “We tried to speak, but no one listened,” one student said. “And when we reacted, we were attacked.”
Private security officers played a particularly troubling role.
The commission found that security personnel blocked exits, physically pushed and intimidated protesters, and attempted to control the crowd without proper authority.
“The security people were stopping us from leaving the campus. They were aggressive, and it made everyone even more scared,” a student said.
Their presence compounded the fear already inflamed by the false social-media post and contributed directly to the surge of students toward the highway.
The report emphasised that these failures could have been mitigated with proper planning, communication, and adherence to human-rights compliant protocols.
To prevent similar incidents in the future, the commission recommended that universities adopt formal protest protocols and actively engage student bodies in dialogue.
It also recommended that there be a review of the role and authority of private security to ensure that police officers deployed to campus events are trained in lawful crowd management.
For WSU students, the report confirms what they experienced firsthand: a simple false post spread on social media, combined with heavy-handed security measures, turned a protest for dignity and justice into a traumatic night of chaos.
