Ermelo - No schooling has taken place in the troubled township of Wesselton outside Ermelo since Monday.
Mpumalanga police spokesperson, Captain Leonard Hlathi, confirmed on Wednesday that schools had been closed all week since unrest broke out on Sunday following accusations that there was manipulation of nomination lists in the Gert Sibande region, ahead of the local government elections.
Provincial education spokesperson Jasper Zwane said the closure of schools was derailing the department's plans to improve the province's matric pass rate this year.
"We are monitoring the situation very carefully and, as soon as everything has calmed down, we will sit down with teachers, parents, pupils and the school governing bodies to come up with a strategy to make up for the lost time," said Zwane.
Hlathi said 113 people, including 20 minors, had been arrested since Monday and charged with public violence.
Some appeared in the Ermelo magistrate's court on Tuesday, where they were released on R200 bail until March 8. Others were expected to appear in court on Wednesday.
Hlathi declined to comment on whether police were responsible for the death of a 41-year-old man, who was found shot dead after clashes between the community and the police on Tuesday.
"We need to get the postmortem results to determine what killed the man," he said.
Hlathi confirmed that the police were forced to use live ammunition on Tuesday to protect themselves from the crowd, who also used live rounds in shootouts with the police.
"We started by using rubber bullets and were forced to use live ammunition after realising that the crowd was shooting at us with live rounds. The difference is that the police were not shooting straight at the crowd, but at objects, and the protesters were shooting directly at the police," he said.
Nine people were reported to have been treated at Ermelo hospital for injuries from live bullet wounds.
Clinics and municipal offices in the township have also been closed all week.
Late on Wednesday afternoon, there were unconfirmed reports that a minor had died of gunshot wounds, but Hlathi could no longer be reached for comment.
