Police have established a task team to investigate hit and attempted hits at the University of Fort Hare in the Eastern Cape.
This comes after the assassination attempt on the university’s vice-chancellor Sakhela Buhlungu.
Buhlungu’s bodyguard Mboneli Vesele was shot and killed on Friday night by assailants who were in a vehicle near Buhlungu’s Alice campus residence.
Police said the “multi-disciplinary” team would “closely investigate the pattern of threats on the lives of the staff members”.
During a visit at the university on Wednesday, police management said they were “intensifying their responses to recent violent and fatal attacks” that led to two deaths.
The police ministry assured the management of Fort Hare University that those behind the assassination attack would be arrested.
Minister of Police General Bheki Cele, Deputy Minister of State Security Zizi Kodwa and the National Commissioner of the SAPS, General Fannie Masemola, visited the campus on Wednesday.
In May 2022, News24 reported that the university’s fleet manager Peet Roets was shot dead near his house in Gonubie after leaving the university’s Alice campus.
A multi-disciplinary task team which will report directly to the office of the national commissioner has been established to closely investigate the patterns of threats on the lives of the staff members of the institution.
Cele said the scope of the investigative team will also include other alleged attempted hits on university staff, which includes the murder of Roets who was killed in March last year.
“It is quite clear that the local police are just nit working fast enough in making arrests and this newly established national team through its work, must, must send a strong message to criminals that this government will not be threatened or shaken and will certainly not back down or co-govern with criminals.”
“As we start the academic year, we can’t afford to have anyone, be it a student, a lecturer and even a groundsman or cleaner of this institution feel uneasy about their safety,” Cele said.
The team will report directly to the office of National Commissioner Fannie Masemola.
Source: News24, The Citizen, Jacaranda FM, image from Twitter: @jacarandafm