Roundup: Protests over tuition fee hike in S. Africa escalate

Protests against tuition fee increases escalated at several major universities on Tuesday, spreading beyond campuses with sporadic incidents of violence.

In the University of Cape Town (UCT), protesting students stormed into lecture halls and intimidated students who were not joining the protest, witnesses said.

University authorities have cancelled classes and put the campus on lock down.

Then the students moved out of the campus into the CBD, blocking traffic along the way, with a police escort.

In Stellenbosch University not far from Cape Town, students formed a human chain to bar police from arresting students. Some students stormed the administration building, breaking glass to get in. Riot police were brought in to control the situation.

In Wits University in Johannesburg, students blocked a road near the campus and turned back police vehicles, only allowing ambulances to pass through.

In other universities across the country, similar protests also took place, some of them reportedly violent.

As protests were escalating, Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande was convening a meeting in Pretoria with representative delegations of university vice-chancellors, council chairs, students and workers, to seek a common framework and approach to the issue of university fee increases for 2016.

"An approach must be developed in order to come up with a dispensation that takes into account the difficult circumstances facing especially the students who come from poor families, as well as the financial pressures facing the system," Nzimande said earlier.

The protests were triggered by all major universities planning to increase tuition fees ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent for the 2016 school year. Some universities demand that students must first make the "minimum initial payment," the lump sum students are expected to pay at the start of each year, which they feel is "exorbitant."

The universities say they have to do so after the government cut education funding and scholarships.

The South African National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) reportedly is short of 51 billion rand (about 3.9 billion U.S. dollars) to fund poor students.

Nzimande denied that funding for poor students has declined. He said the NSFAS funding has increased from 441 million rand in 1997 to 9.5 billion rand in 2015.

"Government remains committed to funding poor students in higher education in the context of a constrained fiscal climate," he said. (One U.S dollar equals 13 rand) Endit