Ann Eveleth
Aruling by a Pretoria judge last week effectively makes University of Cape Town vice-chancellor Mamphela Ramphele’s old school imaginary.
Judge Ben du Plessis decided that Stephanus Hofmeyer Farm School near Kranspoort in Northern Province did not exist as a legal entity at the time its staff and pupils were evicted because its governing body was only formed later.
He made this judgment despite the fact that children had been attending the school for 50 years before it was closed, and counts Ramphele, as well as several doctors, nurses and ministers, among its illustrious alumni. Ramphele’s father once served as its principal.
According to one Hofmeyer parent, the school was founded by the Dutch Reformed Church (NGK). It became a state school in about 1960, although it was still on church land.
The school was closed last July after the NGK sold the land to a farmer who wanted to develop its tourist potential. But the sale was suspended in August pending a land restitution claim by the community, and Kranspoort parents went to court to get the school re-opened, as it is the only school within walking distance of the community.
State attorney Gadija Behardine supported the application on behalf of Northern Province Education MEC Joseph Phaala, who belatedly joined as an intervening applicant on January 5.
Phaala disputed a claim by the church that the provincial education department had agreed to close the school, but correspondence between church representative Dr Jan Viljoen and Soutpansberg Education Circuit Manager HK Theron suggested the church had obtained acceptance, from a lower level within the department, for its bid to close the school.
Viljoen notified Theron in March 1997 of his intention to close the school. Theron wrote to his area manager in April that the school “would have to be closed down permanently” as the church was selling the land and “the purchasing agreement stipulated that the property rights be transferred free from any obligation or undertaking to provide school facilities”.
But Viljoen denied in his affidavit that such a condition was attached to the sale, and claimed it was the education department that closed the school. He also claimed that “no teachers or pupils arrived on the first day of the new school term” because the school was closed. It was this version the court accepted, and the judge dismissed the application to re-open the school, with costs.
Behardine argued that Judge du Plessis’s decision was incorrect. “It cannot be said a school that existed for 50 years and does not have a governing body suddenly disappears,” she said. Few South African schools had governing bodies prior to the new Schools Act of 1996.
Meanwhile, it is too late for parents to register their children at other schools and the closest alternative is 9km away — a distance for which most of the parents could not afford transport.