EFF and later-joining ANC members started burning tyres outside the school on Wednesday.
UPDATE: Protesters have reportedly thrown a petrol bomb at a police van. The vehicle has been cordoned off and is now considered a crime scene.
Tensions have escalated outside Hoërskool Overvaal in Vereeniging as protestors set a Democratic Alliance T-shirt alight and threatened to burn more tyres outside the school.
Armed police have since barricaded the entrance to Hoërskool Overvaal and their heavy presence has sought to prevent protestors and parents from clashing.
As more government vehicles have arrived on the scene, some parents have come to the school to fetch their children.
On Wednesday, a member of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – who were protesting outside of the school – allegedly punched a parent who was accompanying his daughter onto the school premises.
EFF and later-joining ANC members started burning tyres outside the school after the attack and police responded by firing rubber bullets and injuring protesters followed by the arrest of 10 protesters.
Last week, the Pretoria high court found the decision by the Gauteng department of education to admit 55 learners to be taught in English into the school which is an Afrikaans medium school to be unlawful.
The high court found in favour of the school’s argument that it does not have the capacity to admit the additional learners.
Racial tensions flared up after the ruling‚ with black parents shouting “away with racism” and threatening to burn the school down. Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi tried to calm tensions by saying the department would appeal the ruling and take it to the Constitutional Court if need be.
Kumbirai Toma, the lawyer for the Gauteng department of education, said the Hoërskool Overvaal’s school governing body (SGB) made it clear during a meeting that “the school was an Afrikaans school and that this will never change”.
Toma also asserted that the school has more than enough capacity to accommodate additional learners and that the department would ensure that all necessary measures would be put in place including getting furniture, study material and an English teacher for the 55 learners.
“The learners were refused entry to the school on the basis of language‚ contrary to requirements of admission process‚” he said.