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A student near a burning bus during clashes with the police after a protest over tuition fees in Johannesburg in 2016. Mujahid Safodien/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Summer break in December and January brought a much needed pause in the unrest at South Africa’s universities. Protests have been continuous here since March 9, 2015, when students demanded the removal of the statue of the British colonizer Cecil John Rhodes from the campus of the University of Cape Town, where I work.

Seen as the symbol of a colonial past, the Rhodes statue found few defenders and was soon removed. The Rhodes Must Fall movement turned into Fees Must Fall, which besieged Parliament and brought a welcome reduction in tuition.

Black college students outnumber white students four to one and now are a majority on the best-funded campuses.…  Seguir leyendo »

Léopold Prudon/Haute école des arts du Rhin

The university where I work is in crisis. Campuses across South Africa are on fire — in some cases literally — as students protesting impossibly high fees lock horns with reckless police officers. Students run a gantlet of rubber bullets, water cannons, stun grenades and tear gas just to make it to the library. Attendance has been sparse, with students, lecturers and other employees staying home in fear. Some universities have turned to overzealous police officers and the infamous private security industry in a bid to bring campuses under control.

Meanwhile protesters have become ever more attached to the uncompromising politics of shutdown, insisting that universities must stay closed until their demands are met.…  Seguir leyendo »

Students cheered as the statue of Cecil Rhodes was removed from the University of Cape Town. Credit Charlie Shoemaker/Getty Images

Not long after I moved from the United States to South Africa six years ago, I took a walk in a city called Bloemfontein. The scale of the downtown is huge, reflecting the ambitions of South Africa’s white settlers. The avenues feel as wide as highways, the department stores soar. Statues of military leaders and politicians from South Africa’s white-ruled past keep watch over the street corners.

But the top-floor windows of the department stores were dark. When apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994, the formerly whites-only downtown rapidly became black-dominated. The department stores ceded to African hair salons, storefront churches and tailors selling the colorful dresses favored by Bloemfontein’s liberated black majority.…  Seguir leyendo »

Students marching at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg last week. Credit Marco Longari/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Last Wednesday, I arrived at the University of the Witwatersrand, where I work, and couldn’t get inside. Some major entrances to the campus in the center of Johannesburg were locked. Others had been barricaded by students. The university had expected a docile, two-hour protest; instead, a week before exams, the campus was shut down by a crowd of 2,000. It’s been closed ever since.

Students at Wits, as it’s known locally, are protesting because the poor are being priced out of higher education. For many of them, getting into a university is a triumph; but staying there is a miracle.

Neither universities nor the government are doing nearly enough to help poor (which generally means black) students survive and graduate.…  Seguir leyendo »