THOHOYANDOU - Last week, Mirror published the story and a picture of the University of Venda's annual Fresher's Ball music festival, where several people were injured.

During that bash, people were seated on the stands, far away from the artists when they were performing. The people shouted to the Univen security officials that they couldn't see the artists clearly while they were performing.

The officers allegedly ignored the lament of the music lovers who were attending the festival. When the favourite gospel singer, Lundi, started to perform, many people moved from the stand to the ground and pushed away a security fence and got onto a nearby stage.

An angry crowd then stampeded through the gate, injuring several people. After the stampede, some of the injured were rushed to the Tshilidzini hospital.

After the function, Sasco, the ANCYL, SUCA and YCS from the University of Venda, submitted a memorandum of grievances to the principal and student affairs management.

In the memorandum, the groups are accusing the SRA of excluding them from all arrangements of the Freshers' ball. They also accused the SRA of hidden agendas about the way that they were handling Freshers' ball matters.

The memorandum was submitted to Mirror and extracts read:

On tickets: As a tradition, finance department is the one that handles the production and sales of tickets. They are surprised to note that certain individuals in the SRA have used the same company that was awarded the tender to print tickets. Freshers ball tickets were sold in almost all beer halls around the Thohoyandou area.

On artists: Some of the artists like Rapson Rambuwani and Colbert Mukwevho were told not to perform while they were just behind the stage. The artists who were performing were fewer than were expected.

On hawkers: Some of the SRA members allowed their political allies to sell in the stadium without necessarily paying the required fee. All hawkers who were selling beer were required to give the SRA members cans of beer. The SRA benefited from kickbacks from hawkers.

On gate takings: It was shocking to find that, in comparison to last year's gate takings, which generated R42 000, this year's generated a minimal amount of R8 000.

The executive management of the University of Venda confirmed that they received that memorandum from those four structures, alleging that some of SRA members were running the fresher's ball poorly.

"We as the executive management are going to investigate these allegations regarding the fresher's ball. If we find out that it is true that the concerned group misused funds during the fresher's ball, we are going to deal with them accordingly. A fresher's ball is meant to welcome new students at the University," said a member of the executive management, Mr Rendani Madzhie.