This week in South Africa, students are protesting the country's new plan to raise college tuition fees in 2017. The protests began around September 19, when Blade Nzimande, minister of higher education, said that universities can increase their fees for the coming school year. Now, the protests have turned violent as police have gotten involved. On Wednesday, in a protest by students of the University of Witwatersrand, located in Johannesburg, two students were injured by police using rubber bullets and stun grenades, The New York Times reports.
Universitys across South Africa have been facing difficulty when it comes to funding their school's programs recently, causing Nzimande to suggest that each university decide on their own increases in tuition price for 2017. However, many students are already having a hard time affording their education. While the minister feels no school should increase tuition by more than 8 percent, and says that some students will be unaffected by this depending on their personal situations, hearing that tuition prices will go up caused students to speak up for their belief that they should be getting free education.
Now, the University of Witwatersrand, the Univeristy of Cape Town and the University of KwaZulu-Natal have started protesting. A police spokesman said that police fired the stun grenades in response to students throwing stones.
Similar protests occured in 2015 when the minister of higer education last proposed a raise in tuition costs across the country, causing him to decide there would be no fee increases for 2016, The Washington Post writes. But these protests are about more than just a raise in tution. Students are also angered by the fact that while about 80 percent of the South African population is black, they face a lot of inequality when it comes to education.
Students have also taken their protests to social media, using the hashtags #Fees2017 and #FeesMustFall.
