Tuesday was a second day of violence on the Wits campus in Johannesburg as students protested against higher education minister Blade Nzimande’s offer of no fee increase for the poor but not the rich.
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Students and security officers pelted one another with stones across the plaza in front of the Great Hall on Wits campus.
A student fires a fire extinguisher during the protest.
Hours after police arrested about 30 students, protesters moved from the main campus to the education campus in Parktown, where other students joined them in their protests against fee hikes announced on Monday.
Police continue to monitor the students walking around campus demonstrating and singing, with a police van driving slowly behind them as they made their way back to Solomon Mahlangu House.
Nompendulo Mkatshwa, outgoing president of the student representative council, said police had fired stun grenades at students gathered near the university.
The government said it would cover the increase for students from families earning less than 600,000 rand ($43,000, 39,000 euros) a year, but student activists have demanded free education for all. “We must however note that there are immediate issues that we need to address as an institution; students who were granted down-payment must be cleared of their debt, they must be given allowances”, the statement read. TV footage showed stun grenades being fired to clear a major road in Johannesburg, while local media said that 31 people who had been arrested for blocking a campus entrance, had been released with a warning.
Student medics at Wits told AFP that they had treated at least 20 injured people.
“I don’t like to see the sight of police in our universities”.
Tshwane University of Technology in the capital Pretoria and the University of Cape Town were also affected by protests.
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This post was syndicated from The Guardian NigeriaThe Guardian Nigeria.
