Neelsie — Local services in Stellenbosch Local Municipality

The Neelsie Student Centre has improved in certain aspects over the years, while failing improve in others such as basic accessibility for disabled and/or neurodivergent students and people.

Some areas such as the platform on the ground floor and stage are not accessible by wheelchair, and the countertops of restaurants are very high and sometimes difficult to reach. While there are elevators, they are extremely old, unreliable, tacky, and dirty. Generally the state of the elevators are bad, and they also do not go up to the top floor by Societies' Offices. The stairs leading up to the offices have some sort wheelchair lift but there are no instructions on how to use it. It's also not ideal to use. Generally, very few ramps or accessible paths are available to go where everyone else can.

Furthermore, the place is incredibly noisy. This is not due to the amount of people who go there, but can be attributed to the various machineries (such as ventilation/airconditioning machines) within the building. It's impossible to have a phone call anywhere inside the building, because the amount of noise makes it impossible for the other person to hear you. Several times I've had to move outside the building when trying to have important phone calls because the other person could not hear me through the background noise. It's also horrible for people who already struggle with noise sensitivity.

And let me not get started on the pricing of meals at the restaurants there... One would think that if you get charged an arm and a leg for a meal there that they would at least include lunch in their employees' workday or pay them well. Several restaurants there do not provide their employees with lunches and they get paid minimum wage despite the expensive costs of items that the customer has to pay. The lack of transparency from some of the places are concerning. It might not be a legal obligation to include lunches for employees, but knowing that my money does not at least go towards that, is upsetting. Some places don't even allow buyers to add a tip.

On the bright side, there seems to be continued maintenance and upgrading of certain parts of the building. The newest useful addition would be the benching and seating areas with plugs for students to do work. There are also new places opening up in a new section of the building, and it is exciting to see what shops would be made available. But it is concerning to me that there are newer additions being made instead of focusing on the maintenance of already established shops, and focusing on basic accessibility. It would be great if each shop in the Neelsie also had their own pages on Google Maps, so we can be specific about which places are accessible or not.

Students might feel like the Neelsie Student Centre is a great place, and that it caters towards diverse people (as I've seen mentioned in other reviews). Unfortunetaly, this has not been my experience as a disabled student with sensory difficulties, and also as someone who is funded by NSFAS. It is too expensive, too noisy, and too inaccessible. Once management fixes or starts focusing on these aspects, I would feel more comfortable in that building. But this has not been the case for the past 3 years...

Beware of the waffle man at moody blues, I orderd old fashioned waffles but no he gave me some chocolate waffles and I loathe the chocolate he used and when i told him this isnt my order he said: "ninga ngibuzi" translates to : " dont ask me dont ask me" bruh what? He was so non chalant about it while I was so...

Their food tastes so bland and I probably have never experienced worse service than I have here in my life. I bought lasagne and it was passed through the oven TWICE but was still cold. This lasagne isn't even lasagne, it's just mince and bechamel sauce, if I can even...