A female student being arrested by SA police. Photo: Cape Argus

Twenty-three South African students at the University of Cape Town were arrested Tuesday as   protests hit  more universities across the country over plans to hike tuition fees.

According to local media, students burnt tyres and threw up barricades at the University of Cape Town and refused to leave, while their peers at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand, where protests dubbed #FeesMustFall on Twitter began on Oct. 13, overturned vehicles driving into the campus.

At least five campuses were engulfed in demonstrations after universities proposed hiking fees by up to 11.5 percent next year.

Students say the move will further disadvantage black learners in Africa’s most advanced economy who had little access to universities during decades of white apartheid rule.

Police said the the UCT students arrested  would face charges of disrupting the peace. Several other UCT students gathered at the police station where the 23 were being held and demanded that they also be detained in solidarity.

UCT Students protest

Police fired stun grenades to disperse protesters at Rhodes University in Grahamstown in the southeast.

UCT and Rhodes university remain closed, while students at Fort Hare university in Eastern Cape also joined the protests. Stellenbosch University authorities obtained a court interdict to bar protests, as students gathered in groups on the campus east of Cape Town.

Live television footage showed police putting out fires and removing rubble at an entrance to the UCT.

“The situation yesterday and today is very, very problematic for us. Some examinations could not take place and work was disrupted everywhere on campus,” Francis Petersen, UCT’s acting Vice-Chancellor, said in a statement.

Another face of the SA students protest

Noloyiso Rwexana, a police officer in the Western Cape province where UCT is located said “more arrests are imminent” if students failed to observe the court interdict.

South Africa’s student body as a whole is mostly black, and it is hampered by tight funding and the lingering effects of discrimination dating from white-minority rule. The proportion of blacks in higher education is still relatively low.

Higher education minister Blade Nzimande said on Monday that each university catered for its own finances and that the government could not afford to provide free education for poor students.

University administrators say without much bigger subsidies from the government they have no option but to raise fees to maintain academic standards.

Universities say the weaker rand currency – down 12 percent against the greenback so far this year – has made it hard to afford library books, journals and electronic research equipment priced in dollars.