Cabinet has taken a hard line on students’ protests against fee increases, calling the destruction of property criminal and vowing that police would act against those responsible.
“Law enforcement agencies, who are acting within the confines of the law, will leave no stone unturned in finding those responsible for the criminal activities we have witnessed,” Presidency Minister Jeff Radebe told a media briefing on Thursday on Cabinet’s fortnightly meeting.
The statement comes a day after a protest at Rhodes University in Grahamstown turned violent and police arrested 10 students, prompting accusations of brutality.
Radebe said President Jacob Zuma would be meeting with Cabinet’s Justice Crime Prevention and Security Cluster later on Thursday, and had instructed it to “deal with the mayhem that is destroying our institutions of higher learning”.
He said Cabinet had, in approving proposed fee increases of eight percent for 2017, agreed to provide the gap funding to cover the adjustment this would mean for poor and so-called missing middle students.
“Government has heard and responded to the pleas of students and will subsidise the fee adjustments for poor and working class university students for 2017,” he said, recalling that the State provided R1.9 billion towards the shortfall created by its moratorium on fee hikes for the current year.
He added that students had a right to protest but must do so peacefully and deplored the death of a worker at the University of the Witwatersrand from inhaling fire extinguisher fumes set off during a protest.
Students had no right to destroy infrastructure and undermined their cause by doing so, he stressed.
“Recent violence marred student protests, when the country witnessed vandalism, destruction of property, burning of libraries and now even the death of a university worker.”
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