Cape Town – The son of liberation struggle stalwart Reverend Frank Chikane was arrested on Wednesday outside Parliament.
“We are angry. We don’t know what we are being charged with or why we were arrested,” said University of Cape Town student and African National Congress card holding member Kgotsi Chikane from the back of a police van.
Chikane and five others were arrested on Wednesday after chaos broke out at parliament, interrupting – but only briefly – Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene’s Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS).
They were part of thousands of students from the Cape’s various higher learning institutions protesting increases in fees and, to a lesser degree, outsourcing of labour. This was a spillover of a nationwide student shutdown which began at the University of Witwatersrand last week.
Joining Chikane were other students and activists including Rhodes Must Fall movement leader Chumani Maxwele, Black First Land First’s Lindsay Maasdorp, and a UCT students Markus Tengrove and Nathan Taylor.
No injuries were reported but the students said they were suffering from “partial deafness”.
It was later established, once already in the police van, that they were arrested for contravening the National Keypoints Act.
African News Agency
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