Last year’s proposed fee increases were cancelled by the government in the wake of widespread protests but Blade Nzimande, the country’s higher education minister, said that universities would be able to choose an increase of up to 8 per cent this year. Government and universities will continue to seek a lasting solution through the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Higher Education and Training with its stated intention to “achieve a far-reaching reconstitution of the entire post-school education and training funding system”.
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Nzimande recommended universities raise their fees “not above eight percent”.
He added the government would cover the increase for students from families earning less than 600,000 rand a year ($42,600).
South African police fired stun grenades and arrested 31 students in clashes at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand on Tuesday, as countrywide protests for free tertiary education entered a third week.
“We need intervention now”. Classes were suspended Wednesday at the University of Cape Town because of security concerns.
Police and campus security had earlier closed all entrances to the meeting venue, the Solomon Mahlangu House, as students continued to bar vehicles from accessing or leaving the Braamfontein campus.
Students are now gathered in large groups and are walking around campus disrupting classes in a bid to get a stronger protest-count.
UCT Vice-Chancellor Max Price said failing to increase fees would result in hundreds of jobs lost, and reduce financial aid to poor students.
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“Either we have to accept the decline in the kinds of universities we have and the funding for students, or we have to put up the fees to compensate”, he told state broadcaster SABC.
