Three hundred and seventy Witwatersrand Technikon students will appear in the Jeppe Magistrate’s Court on Thursday in connection with staging an illegal protest, police said
Captain Schalk Bornman said the students had also been charged with intimidation and trespassing. All those arrested were being held in custody and the fingerprinting and documentation process took more than six hours because many of the students refused to co-operate with the formalities, Bornman said.
Supper was also served to the students before some of them were transferred to Johannesburg central police station holding cells because the cells at Jeppe were full, Bornman said.
Some 300 students were arrested in Jorissen Street in central Johannesburg around 2pm on Wednesday and another 50 were apprehended at the technikon’s Doornfontein campus.
Dozens of policemen, some in riot control gear, barricaded the pavements of Jorissen Street to stop students from protesting in the road.
The students were protesting against management changing rules without consulting them. Recently the technikon stopped allowing friends and parents of students from visiting them in their rooms at their hostels, for security reasons. – Sapa