I think that the stampedes at the University of Johannesburg were fairly predictable and that the University management clearly did a very poor job of managing their registration process. Last year’s newspapers had pictures of crowded streets outside UJ, and whenever there are such big crowds, you need to have proper crowd management in place.

It seems to be something that a country such as ours, apart from exceptions like the World Cup, is not very good at, whereas countries like the United Kingdom have dealt with their tragedies of the past more effectively, and now ensure proper crowd control at all times. If you know 50,000 people are turning up, and you do, because they came last year, you make proper provisions for it. You call in the police, you hire extra security guards and you split the registration between different campuses, depending on what the people are studying and different days depending on, for example, the first letter of their surname so as to reduce the crowds all on one specific day.

On top of that, I really don’t know how backward the registration process at UJ must be, in this age of Internet and technology, where they have to have last minute, stand in the queue registrations for tertiary education for 50 000 people? The vast majority of the applications should be dealt with over the Internet and via the post. After all, all they are really looking at generally is the potential students’ matriculation marks, and whether they get that via e-mail, the post or verify it with the relevant government departments themselves, they don’t need to have 50,000 people all trying to squeeze through one gate on the same day every year. Quite frankly, those who have seen relatives injured or lost should think of taking legal action against the University of Johannesburg.