Clashes between police and students protesting about the cost of education forced South Africa’s Wits and Cape Town universities to suspend classes yesterday for the second time in less than a month.
The cost of university education, prohibitive for many black students, has become a symbol of the inequalities that endure in South Africa more than two decades after the end of apartheid.
Protests first erupted last year, then eased off as the government froze fee increases and set up a commission to look into the education funding system. But unrest has boiled up again since the commission said on Sept. 19 that fees would continue to rise.
A spokeswoman for the University of the Witwatersrand, known as Wits, and which reopened on Monday after protests last month forced a shutdown, said late on Tuesday that classes would be cancelled 
until October 10.
“We have agreed to suspend the academic programme,” 
Shirona Patel said.
Police on Tuesday fired stun grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas after students calling for free education at the Johannesburg campus threw stones at police and flipped one vehicle. The university said some protesters had earlier pulled lecturers out of their offices as they prepared to restart classes after the shutdown called on 
September 20.
Wits, which has been the epicentre of the protests, conducted a poll last week asking students if they wanted go back to class.
Some 77% of the 21,730 students who voted supported the resumption of lessons but clashes between students over whether classes should resume were reported yesterday.