South African police fired stun grenades and arrested 31 students in clashes at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand on Tuesday, as countrywide protests for free tertiary education entered a third week.
The demonstrations over the cost of university education — prohibitive for many black students — have highlighted frustration at the inequalities that persist more than two decades after the end of white-minority rule in 1994.
The clashes, began when students marched to protest against a government recommendation that 2017 university tuition fee increases be capped at 8 percent. The cap is higher than South Africa’s current inflation rate of 6 percent.
(Reporting by Tanisha Heiberg; Writing by James Macharia; Editing by Catherine Evans)