Protesters had thrown stones at security guards outside a main campus building. A man has his face covered as he protests outside the South African Parliament building against government announcement of student fee increases in Cape Town, South Africa, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2016.
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Student leaders at Wits University say they’re now coordinating with other leaders from higher learning institutions to organise a national march for free education.
As day two of student protests at the University of the Witswatersrand got under way, about 31 students from the university were arrested early on Tuesday morning as they attempted to shut down the university. Police surrounded a student residence where protesters gathered, the African News Agency reported.
Attempting to deter the protesting students from marching to the education campus, police threw stun grenades on the corner of Empire and St Andrews roads but the infuriated and adamant group marched on through the bangs and smoke.
There was a heavy police presence on Thursday at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand, known as “Wits”, which has been the epicentre of student protests against higher fees.
The minister also announced that poor students who qualified for NSFAS funding and students who came from households where the annual income was less than R600 000 would not have to deal with the increments as government would subsidise the shortfall.
Demonstrations since 2015 over the cost of university education, prohibitive for many black students, have highlighted frustration at the inequalities that persist more than two decades after the 1994 end of white-minority rule.
The students tried to plead their way through but a police officer told them their protest was illegal and their leadership should have made proper arrangements beforehand.
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“There are many students from upper middle class and well-off families, as well as students on full company bursaries in our institutions who can afford to pay the adjusted 2017 fees, and we expect them to do so”, Nzimande said at a media briefing in Pretoria.
