Education
Rodger Bosch / AFP / Getty Images
South African riot police fired tear gas and stun grenades at hundreds of demonstrating students who had gathered Wednesday outside the parliament building in Cape Town in protest over planned tuition fee increases.
The violence unfolded after students pushed their way through a parliament gate and scuffled with riot police. Earlier, security guards forcibly removed a group of opposition lawmakers from the parliament floor after politicians sympathetic to the students disrupted debate by chanting: "Fees must fall!"
"We were pushed back by police with force. The stun grenade was shot right next to my ear. I still have the buzzing in my ear," said Motheo Lengoasa, a student at University of Cape Town, as others chanted and sang songs demanding lower fees.
President Jacob Zuma, who wore a stony expression during the incident in parliament, has not commented on the sometimes-violent protests that have disrupted at least 14 of South Africa's universities — which say they are struggling with higher operational costs as well as inadequate state subsidies — in the past week.
"We are merely fighting for an education. That's it. We're just fighting for education. Nothing more. We're fighting to open the doors so that every black child, which is the majority of the working class, can have a chance at playing a role in developing the economy of this country. And you want to shoot at us?" one protester told AJ+ on Tuesday.
Amid the protests Tuesday, 23 students at the University of Cape Town were arrested and later released. Police said the students would face charges of disrupting the peace.
Many in South Africa say the government is not doing enough to subsidize the university education of its youth, a number of whom struggle to pay for school. University administrators say that without much bigger subsidies from the government, they have no option but to raise fees to maintain academic standards.
Some South African leaders have said the country's education system is still trying to overcome the legacy of apartheid, the 1948-1994 system of racist rule that favored the white minority while denying basic rights and opportunities to the black majority.
Blade Nzimande, the country’s minister for higher education, this week proposed a 6 percent limit on tuition fee increases next year. But student leaders rejected that proposal and said they would continue their protests, according to South African media reports.
The University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, also known as Wits, has suspended lectures and other operations for the rest of the week. It had dropped a proposed hike of 10.5 percent in tuition fees after several days of protests. Other universities had also planned increases of at least 10 percent.
David Dickinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Witwatersrand who said he voted against the school’s hike, said the impact of tuition raises is especially difficult on poorer students. In an op-ed published on [this correct?] South African news website News24, Dickinson wrote that until 2014, the university was able to provide scholarships to help such students. But he added that "the increasing reduction of state subsidies" was among the factors that had “made this top-up impossible.”
“Good education for the rich and inadequate education for the poor can only divide South Africa further," he wrote.
Al Jazeera and wire services
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