Rubber bullets fly over #FeesMustFall

MBOMBELA – Police fired rubber bullets at protesting students at the University of Mpumalanga (UMP) in order to disperse their demonstration yesterday.

The #FeesMustFall campaign finally spread to the province on Monday when students at the UMP burned tyres at the entrance to the Mbombela campus. Witnesses said protesters were peaceful before police opened fire on them.

The fees campaign flared up again last week at the major universities in the country’s cities after the minister of higher education and training, Mr Blade Nzimande, announced academic fee hikes for 2017 would be left to varsities, with a ceiling of eight per cent.

Violent protests broke out and classes were suspended.

Also read: Warning: Avoid agricultural college road due to ongoing protests at UMP 

Capt Dawie Pretorius, spokesman for Mbombela SAPS, said the students turned violent.

“They responded well to our request that they stay out of the road at first and traffic flowed freely,” he explained.Later they moved down in the direction of Mbombela. When we asked them to get out of the road, they became rebellious and started throwing rocks at our vehicles. We then used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse them.”

Only a police vehicle was hit. A case of public violence was opened.

While arsonists at the University of the Witwatersrand attempted to burn a library earlier, students at UMP are demanding that the university’s library be open to them 24 hours a day.

The student representative council (SRC) president, Mr Thabiso Shongwe from the South African Students Congress told Lowvelder they did not want the university to increase fees in 2017 given the financial situation of the students.

“We are paving a way for free, quality education. That will only be achieved through working with government and universities. We want to meet with them to discuss this,” he said.

They further called on the university to provide bursaries through partnerships with role players in the private sector.

According to Shongwe, students were frustrated with the National Students Financial Aid Scheme’s empty promises.
He alleged that the scheme promised 100 per cent funding for all UMP students in 2016, but their applications were still pending. “We are waiting for their response regarding that and I can prove that not even a single student has been responded to,” he said.

They also plead with the university to provide adequate accommodation to all students. They alleged that some residences had broken showers, much to the students’ inconvenience.

The university was opened in 2013 and students said there were still no health facilities available.

“When we get sick we have to leave the campus to receive medical attention. It interferes with our academic activities because we have to spend a lot of time off campus,” said student Mr Lungelo Malaza.

He said they had resolved to keep the strike peaceful, but they would stay away from writing their exams.

“As students we are intellects and we understand that we cannot burn our own infrastructure in our quest to have our voices heard,” he said.

UMP management was handed a memorandum from the students with their grievances. They were supposed to respond by 17:00 yesterday, after the newspaper had gone to print.