The University of the Free State campuses have started reopening. Photo: Tladi Moloi
After protests rocked the University of the Free State last week, an agreement has been reached between the university and student representatives. Academic activities resumed on Monday.
The protests caused extensive material damagewere against the university’s decision to terminate provisional registration. Provisional registration allows students to register before paying their full tuition.
The university’s board and student representation have agreed that provisional registration will be phased out in two years. Students who owe R70,000 or less can register in 2026, and students who owe R60,000 or less can register in 2027.
The academic calendar for the rest of 2025 has been adjusted. The end of the fourth quarter will be postponed and the end-of-year exams will now end on November 10 instead of November 3.
UFS Bloemfontein SRC chairman Ogorogile Moleme said he had mixed feelings about the outcome of the talks.
“I wouldn’t say if we’re happy or not. But the agreement was the best offer the leadership could come out of the meeting with.”
UFS Senior Director for Communications and Marketing Lacea Loader said: “The phased approach gives the university time to assess the risks students face, with a view to helping [them].”
© 2025 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article as long as you credit the authors and GroundUp and do not alter the text. Add a link to the original article.
We placed an invisible pixel in the article so we can count traffic to republishers. All analysis tools are located exclusively on our servers. We do not give our log files to third parties. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are only interested in counting hits, don’t follow users. If you republish, do not delete the invisible pixel.
By Tladi Moloi
groundup.org.za
