About 150 students were arrested at a South African university overnight in the latest in a series of violent campus protests, police said on Thursday.
About 1 000 students of the University of Limpopo’s Turfloop campus in the north of the country went on the rampage, breaking windows and throwing stones at passing cars late on Wednesday evening.
“On arrival we found that the main entrance gate was damaged, classroom window panes were broken and in the administration block window panes were also broken,” Inspector Malan Nchabaleng said.
He said the library was also damaged and one of the dining halls set on fire.
In the fracas a 20-year-old female student was seriously injured and taken to hospital.
“We managed to arrest 150 students and we expect to arrest more. They will appear in the local magistrate’s court very soon,” Nchabaleng said, adding the students would be charged with arson and malicious damage to property.
The university could not be reached for comment, but Nchabaleng said it was thought that the students were protesting over results of student elections, while other media reports suggested they were angry at proposed fee hikes.
Police were patrolling the campus on Thursday, when the situation remained calm.
Students at two Johannesburg universities protested over fee hikes last month, and police used stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse them when protests grew violent. — AFP