Exactly a year ago, university students in South Africa made international headlines in an unprecedented move of student activism for the #FeesMustFall protest. Students of the University of Witwatersrand (Wits), University of Cape Town, and Rhodes University shut down their schools in protest against a proposed 10 to 12 percent increase in tuition fees that was slated to commence this year.
After a week’s protest, the students won their demand for a zero percent increase in tuition fees as President Zuma conceded to the protests agreeing to freeze tuition fees in public universities. However, a recent announcement on the 19th of September that fees would rise with an 8 percent cap in 2017 has reignited nationwide demonstrations and unrest as university student’s march through streets and campuses in Johannesburg.
Today, protests at Wits University escalated as students threw stones at the police and overturned their vehicles. The police, in turn, fired rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas at the students. According to reports, spent shotgun shells and rocks littered certain areas of the university campus after several skirmishes between police and protesters.
The university management had sent for the police following several harassments of the institutions’ staff by the students. The school’s spokesperson, Shirona Patel, told Reuters that students had forced lecturers out of their offices shortly after the university reopened on Monday after a shut down during earlier protests.
The protest over the cost of tuition highlights issues of inequality and government’s poor investment in education. At the peak of the #FeesMustFall protest late last year, university funding in South Africa was less than one percent of the country’s GDP; government funding to universities have been static even as the cost of tuition increase over the years.
Students have often argued that the fee hike would favour white students thereby widening the gap in the skewed black-white representation in South African universities. In 2014, university participation for indigenous South Africans ages 18 to 29 increased by a meagre 0.6 percent from 2.8 percent in 2002 to 3.4 percent. While whites of the same age range had an increased participation of 15.6 percent in 2002 to 23.3 percent in 2014.
As the protests rage on, university administrators across the country have warned that any further fee freezes could damage academic programs, therefore, it is unlikely that current protests would result in a zero percent fee hike like they did last year.
