South African tuition protests turn violent as police use stun grenades on students

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Riot police hurled dozens of stun grenades at unarmed student protesters who had broken through police barriers at South Africa's Parliament on Wednesday as a university protest movement escalated to unprecedented heights.

South Africans were shocked by the scenes of violence as television channels carried live broadcasts of riot police fighting with teenaged students at the doors of Parliament in Cape Town, while MPs inside the locked-down building listened to the explosions of the stun grenades, which left several students bleeding and burned.

Thousands of enraged students, who had earlier forced a national shutdown of many of South Africa's biggest universities in a protest against fee increases, marched to the gates of the parliamentary precinct and quickly overwhelmed the badly outnumbered police who were trying to prevent them from reaching the chamber where the Finance Minister was giving a mini-budget speech.

The students raced past the police to the locked doors of Parliament, but were pushed back as the police responded with violence, charging at the students with batons, shields, grenades and pink-dye smoke. There were hand-to-hand scuffles and screams as the students clashed with the police and stampeded away from the stun grenades. Even after they were pushed back, they continued to hurl bricks and garbage cans at police while blockading major roads. At least six were arrested.

Only minutes earlier, opposition MPs from the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters had delayed and disrupted the Finance Minister's speech, chanting "Fees Must Fall" in support of the students. Parliamentary officials from the ruling African National Congress ordered security guards to evict the MPs, and the chamber was briefly engulfed in more violence as the guards roughly manhandled the MPs and forcibly evicted them.

South African media said the violence by riot police at the doors of Parliament was unprecedented in the post-apartheid era. It was the first time since apartheid ended in 1994 that protesters had burst past police barriers to reach Parliament's doors, they said.

Student protests have a powerful symbolism in South Africa, where they evoke memories of the Soweto students who led an uprising against apartheid in 1976 and were suppressed by a brutal police crackdown. Those students became national heroes and are commemorated in an annual Youth Day, a national holiday.

While the latest student protests were sparked by an attempt to impose a 10-per-cent fee increase at the biggest university in Johannesburg, the student movement has been building momentum over the past year, fuelled by a range of social issues. Students first protested against monuments to Cecil Rhodes, the 19th-century British imperialist and mining magnate who is seen as a symbol of colonial racism. They succeeded in forcing the removal of a Rhodes monument from a place of honour at the University of Cape Town.

Student leaders have also focused on the slow pace of racial transformation at many universities since the end of apartheid. They complain that racism and discrimination are still common, and they have called for larger numbers of black faculty and easier access for black students.

But the protests also reflect a growing anger at the lack of economic progress in South Africa, where unemployment remains high, especially for young people. More than 50 per cent of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 are unemployed – one of the highest youth jobless rates of any developed economy in the world.

Even as the students were clashing with riot police on Wednesday at Parliament, Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene was inside the chamber, announcing that he had revised downward his latest forecast of South Africa's growth. He is now forecasting a 1.5-per-cent economic growth rate this year, down from earlier forecasts of 2 per cent, and he is forecasting a 1.7-per-cent growth rate next year, down from an earlier projection of 2.4 per cent.

"Electricity supply constraints, falling commodity prices and lower confidence levels have resulted in our growth forecasts being revised lower," Mr. Nene told Parliament.