Dawn Blalock
A PLAN to build a high school for disadvantaged students has stirred up charges of racism in Sophiatown – and illustrates how the community is still haunted by its turbulent history.
Sparrow Schools Educational Trust, a non- profit group that runs special education schools for disadvantaged children, is trying to buy a plot of land between Sophiatown and Westdene from St Joseph’s Home for Children, to build a school for 500 students.
Private donors have agreed to contribute more than half the R6,5-million needed. Corporate donors have been lined up to sponsor “skills centres” to teach catering, carpentry, hairdressing and auto mechanics.
But what seemed a perfect plan to Sparrow quickly ran into trouble.
The school would bring crime, traffic, noise and black students from townships into their neighbourhood, said local residents. Construction would disturb residents of a neighbouring old-age home and harm the ecological balance of the Melville Koppies.
They said this although the nature reserve is separated from the site by more than 600m of cemetery land and a major thoroughfare. Backing up the complaints in writing, residents submitted more than 700 objections, says councillor Eddy Venter.
The opponents say the objections have “nothing to do with race”. The school would lower property values, says Phil Haywood, head of a residents’ group, and “people are merely trying to protect their investments”.
But during contentious community meetings over the past two months, the issue has had everything to do with race. At one meeting the crowd started bickering among themselves about whether the suburb’s name was “Sophiatown”, the regained old name, or the apartheid-era “Triomf”.
One woman asked why they didn’t send the students “back to Soweto”.
Westdene resident Sue Gillett said she was horrified by the racial antagonism. Had a white Afrikaans school been proposed “there wouldn’t have been a murmur”, she believes.
But James Ainsworth, a black American who settled his family in this community two years ago, argues differently. From his patio he overlooks what would be the school’s parking lot and says that the community is being unfairly stereotyped as “conservative white Afrikaners”.
In fact, many residents canvassing the neighbourhood in opposition are not white, he says. The school “is not intended to serve us. The school is intended to serve students from the townships and the East Rand.”
Sparrow’s chair, Mary Bailey,says she has been stunned by the reaction. “There was a sense of something so vibrant in Sophiatown and it was destroyed. To bring these children back and educate them in this area, it’s wonderful. It’s their heritage.”
Sparrow already has a school in neighbouring Melville, where some residents painted school walls, donated trees and now host children.