Police repression of school pupils boycotting classes has continued unabated, particularly in African schools in the Cape Province and parts of the Transvaal. Police attacks on meetings, arrests and detentions have occurred as they did in earlier stages of the boycott. African education has come to a halt in several areas with the indefinite closure of schools by the government.
Police actions against pupils were reported within days of the start of the new school term at the beginning of August, all over the country, and in both urban and rural areas. Examples included: use of teargas to disperse 200 students at Adelaide School (Eastern Cape) who were burning books in the playground; use of birdshot and arrest of several pupils when over 4,000 from schools in Dieploof (Soweto) marched through the streets protesting against rent increases and Bantu education; arrest of four pupils in Kimberley. In the Ciskei police used batons and teargas against pupils from two schools, and 38 were arrested. The pupils were demanding a closure of schools until a 'new system of education is introduced, one education for all'.
By September conflict with police had become more violent in a number of areas.
At least one student was shot dead by Ciskei police on 11 September. It happened after students from one school marched into three other schools demanding that their pupils join the boycott. The police said that they were following the students and responded only when attacked by them. The students claimed that three pupils between the ages of 11 and 12 years had been killed and 50 injured when police opened fire on them.
In Kimberley police arrested 112 pupils on 8 September. When four pupils were arrested at the beginning of August, the rest said they would not go back until the four had been released and their demands met, declaring that they were prepared to sacrifice their end of year examinations to do away with Bantu education. The arrests in September came on the day the Minister of Education and Training was visiting Kimberley and after a meeting of 1,500 pupils at a community centre had been dispersed with teargas. Although the press reported that the pupils had 'gone on the rampage' through a white residential area, the children denied this. A source described as a 'high ranking white official' said that most of the damage occurred when panic-stricken pupils fled from baton-charging policemen.
In the African townships around Cape Town all the schools were deserted by 10 August. The school boycott coincided with the bus boycott and conflict with the police was at times intense. In both August and September a number of students and pupils were detained in connection with the boycott, as was the case in the Eastern Cape as well.
In mid-September, with no signs in several areas of the boycott breaking, the government closed African schools in those areas indefinitely.
On 9 September the Minister of Education and Training announced that all senior African schools in Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage were closed. A few days later all higher primary and secondary schools for Africans were closed in Cape Town, Paarl, Worcester, Oudtshoorn, Adelaide and Kimberley.
The Minster said that pupils at the affected schools would not qualify for internal promotion or for the writing of external examinations. Teaching staff would be transferred to other schools, adult education centres and circuit offices.
Students said that the Department of Education and Training had not met any of their short term demands, which included the recognition of freely elected student representative councils, the reinstatement of suspended or expelled students, the release of those detained in connection with the boycott, better facilities and the return of transferred teachers to their respective institutions.
Students, educationalists, politicians and various organisations such as the South African Institute of Race Relations and the South African Council of Churches have said that to stop the boycott, the government will have to provide equal education for all with no form of separation of educational institutions based on race or culture.
