Cost Implications of the 2018 Student Violent Protests at the University of Venda - Research

Over the past few years, student violent protest has been widely celebrated in many universities in South Africa. University of Venda is not an exception. At some point, student protest was cultured in the sense that it has consistently occurred at certain periods annually, in different universities across South Africa. It seems, these protests are organised without consideration of their socio-economic implications on the universities , the students and the universities' hosting communities. Apparently, the perpetrators of protests may have little or no knowledge about the remnants such action resonates. This provides the impetus for this paper, which uses the 2018 students' violent protests at the university of Venda, to provide insight into consequences of students' violent protest, from the socio-economic point of view. Theoretically, it draws on Waters, Hyder, Rajkotia, Basu, and Butchart's (2005) understanding of the consequences of youth violence, which looks at the effects of violence beyond personal harm. A mixed research design method was followed. Staff and students were interrogated on the concern using a self-developed semi-structured and structured questionnaires. Qualitative analysis was performed using Atlas ti v8. Mean ranks of three factors that emerged revealed that economic cost (42.5%) amassed the highest followed by academic cost (31.5%) and health cost (26%). To mitigate subsequent protest, the management should facilitate open dialogues on student-related challenges. Elected student representatives should be subjected to leadership skills training. The study also recommends further strengthening of security measures, as a way to discourage students' protests that takes a violent path.