Ann Eveleth
BLACK students attending school in a working-class Afrikaans suburb of Pretoria West should “go back to Soweto”, said white parents standing guard outside Elandspoort High School this week after three days of racial clashes which saw two students hospitalised with bat and knife wounds.
By Thursday morning the school was still struggling to return to normality as Gauteng Education Department officials probed the tensions.
A minor spark – a disputed verbal exchange between a white Afrikaans teacher and two black students – ignited deep-seated racial animosity which by most accounts had been brewing since the school first began integrating in 1995.
“I don’t know why they must go to white schools. Why can’t they go back to Soweto or somewhere else? You can’t mix the blacks with the Afrikaans,” an irate Afrikaans- speaking mother told the Mail & Guardian.
The woman, who declined to be named, was one of a dozen white parents who spent Thursday morning watching for renewed clashes. A dozen black parents also stood guard, but the two groups stood 100m apart and made no attempt to resolve their children’s differences.
Black students now comprise about 40% of the school’s 800 students.
“If you want better education for your children, you will take them to the best school you can,” said Michael Mampa, a nurse and parent of a pupil. “Those white parents say we must go back to Atteridgeville, Shoshanguve and Garankuwa, but what must we do if the schools are full?”
Mampa and the other black parents, like their children, want the school to take action against a small group of white boys from the first rugby team whom they call the “pie gang”.
Black students like David Mathlape and Ephraim Ndlovu say the pie gang is behind the tensions they claim have been brewing since they first entered Elandspoort.
“They always push us and call us kaffirs and niggers, but the principal never does anything because their parents sponsor the rugby team,” said Mathlape.
At the centre of the black students’ allegations is a star rugby player named Gert. His parents were not at the school on Thursday, but the other white parents rushed to his defence: “All the people accuse Gert just because he’s a good rugby player and a good sportsman,” said a local businessman named Dana who claimed to be the rugby team’s main sponsor.
“If they expel one student from that team, this school will be unruleable because we are going to ask the parents of Danville to take their kids out of school. If they want to take over the school they can have it, but they won’t get any of our funding,” said Vincent Botha.