STUDENTS armed with cricket bats, sticks and stones fought running battles yesterday in a second day of violent racial confrontation on a South African campus.
Riot police fired rubber bullets to disperse about 700 students involved in running battles at Pretoria Technikon.
The fighting, in which at least 10 people have been injured and 20 cars damaged, was apparently sparked by disagreement between white and black student groups on a number of issues, a police spokeswoman, Ms Adele Moody, said.
A spokesman for the institute told the Sapa news agency that several students were injured when police fired rubber bullets. Others were hurt as students armed with sticks and whips chased each other across campus.
Yesterday's clashes started with the two groups shouting insults and throwing stones at each other, Sapa said. Two were subsequently arrested.
Ms Mary Metcalfe, Education Minister for Gauteng province, later addressed the two groups of students separately in the hope of ending the strife.
"It is a tragedy to halve to address you in separate groups," she said. After speaking to the black students, Ms Metcalfe said their grievances were reasonable. She undertook to take up the matter with the country's Education Minister, Mr Sibusiso Bengu.
The students demanded that all outstanding debts and the 18.5 per cent interest being charged on outstanding fees be scrapped. They also called for a reduction of "exorbitant" prices charged for food at campus cafeterias.
Black students are claiming they are being victimised by whites and accuse the institution of not dealing with their problems. One black student said blacks had difficulty being accepted at the institute and that they struggled to learn because lectures are in Afrikaans.
In a memorandum handed to the Students' Representative Council, white students demanded that classes continue uninterrupted, that violence on campus be stopped and that political activities on campus be banned.
Addressing the whites, Ms Metcalfe urged them not to take the law into their own hands.
The violence erupted one Wednesday after black student protesters tried to take control of a mass meeting called to air black grievances over high files and stiff entrance requirements angry whites then attacked black students.
Since South Africa's transition to democracy in 1994, black and white college students have clashed on several occasions.
AFP adds from Cape Town South Africa's parliamentarians, who last week passed what was acclaimed as the most liberal constitution in the world, have also been given some of the most progressive perquisites.
New rules drawn up by parliament officials show that any number of polygamous wives or polyandrous husbands may share in a member's free travel and free phone call allowances, as may homosexual, or unwed heterosexual "companions".