Protesting students tried to force their way onto the campus this week
This week, the #FeesMustFall movement experienced the most violent response to its fight for free education since the protests started last year.
Following arson attacks on libraries and halls, as well as vandalism to property, police and private security guards were deployed in full force to quell the demonstrations.
Dozens of students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the Durban University of Technology were injured, and some were hospitalised, during clashes with police and private security guards.
Libraries, lecture halls and laboratories have been torched and student leaders have been detained, arrested and charged with damage to property.
At the University of Johannesburg, 22 people were injured, of whom 11 were hospitalised, after security guards allegedly attacked protesting students with poles and rocks on Wednesday evening.
Rhodes University students were shot with rubber bullets by police who patrolled the campus with their shotguns in a ready-to-fire position. A video shows a Grahamstown police officer dragging a student across a tarred road and pulling another over a wall to place her under arrest. In the background, students are heard pleading with them to stop. Twelve people were arrested and the university’s student representative council (SRC) has called for a mass stayaway.
“It is unacceptable that the university has called for business as usual whilst our fellow students are in jail and hospital. We urge students to be vigilant … as there is a continued heavy police presence on campus,” the Rhodes SRC said in statement.
In Polokwane, University of Limpopo students slept on church benches after the institution’s management expelled them from their residences, only hours after teargas and stun grenades were fired at them when they tried to close the institution.
Students shut down the university campuses in Polokwane and convinced their counterparts at private colleges in the city to do the same, bringing almost all tertiary education in the province to a halt.
“Those who couldn’t afford to go home were taken in by the Catholic and Anglican churches. They left without taking their stuff because we only had four hours to vacate,” said Julius Matlabane, the University of Limpopo SRC secretary general.
In Johannesburg, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) students held their third peaceful march, this time to the Chamber of Mines to ask for money to fund free education.
At the universities of Stellenbosch and Cape Town, academics have come out in support of the students, but the students are now facing calls to end the demonstrations for the sake of continuing with classes.
“Lecturers told us, if classes don’t resume on Monday, the academic programme will be seriously disrupted. Exams were pushed back two weeks and most people living in off-campus accommodation are going home. We don’t know what’s coming next,” said Garrick Scheepers, a first-year student at the University of Cape Town (UCT).
The divisions among protest leaders along political lines remained evident in Grahamstown, where the SRC is seemingly losing support.
“The SRC initially said they don’t support the shutdown and we must protest within bounds of an interdict against the students. Many students have rejected their two-faced leadership,” said Charissa Cassels, a second-year student at Rhodes.
At Wits, the SRC failed in its attempts to block a referendum on whether to resume classes, and UCT students are unhappy with the institution’s alumni being asked to lobby for the resumption of normal activities. Both institutions are now conducting SMS polls, which they said will determine what happens next.
“At Wits, we are co-ordinating national #FeesMustFall activities and protest action will continue. We haven’t had any movement towards free education and we can’t open campuses until we achieve that. Stopping the academic programme is our only bargaining power,” the Wits SRC’s secretary general, Fasiha Hassan, said.