S. Africa Protesters Try to Bar Blacks From White School

Armed with clubs and leashed dogs, white protesters tried to stop black students from attending a high school in their neighborhood Wednesday but were pushed back by riot police.

It was the first major confrontation over South Africa’s new education policy, which allows black students to attend school with white students as well as use any underutilized schools in white areas.

Wednesday was the second straight day that white residents of Ruyterwacht, a working-class suburb north of Cape Town, protested the busing of black students from the nearby Khayelitsha township.

The demonstrators tried to prevent school buses from approaching the building. But riot police formed a line so that more than 3,000 students could arrive. Protesters and students exchanged jeers and racial taunts as the buses drew near.

Two protesters chased a journalist, and a police officer fired a warning shot, prompting some students to throw sticks and rocks over the fence at protesters, but no one was injured.

A male student with a stab wound was taken from the school and died later in a hospital, but the wound was believed to have come from a fight at school with another student.

The school, formerly reserved for white students under apartheid, had been used last year by an army medical battalion.

“We feel angry because they are delaying our school progress while their children are in school,” Linda Magadla, 17, said of the white protesters.

But residents complained that students had been roaming their neighborhood, vandalizing property and smoking marijuana.

“This is not racist,” said Leon de la Fonteyn. “I have no problem if they come here in a decent manner, but 350 of them, not 3,000.”