MPUMALANGA’s education department has postponed the release of a ?damning? report on racism in local schools, which allegedly details practices like R300 registration fees for black pupils and a ban on black or English speaking pupils attending assemblies or lunch breaks with Afrikaans pupils.
Education spokesman Peter Maminza said the preliminary report on ‘institutional racism’ was so damning that MEC Craig Padayachee had decided to first brief Premier Ndaweni Mahlangu and other cabinet members to ensure “they are not caught off-guard”.
“We cannot pre-empt the cabinet briefing, but I believe that there will a definitely be broader and more in-depth follow-up probe as a result of these preliminary findings,” said Maminza.
The investigation was prompted by reports that some formerly Afrikaans schools in the Highveld region were systematically discriminating against black or English speaking applicants.
The SA Human Rights Commission sanctioned the preliminary probe last month, but urged Mpumalanga authorities to broaden their racism investigations to include bias against the disabled and certain religions.
SAHRC commissioner Charlotte McClain said in January that it was essential to deal with all discriminatory admission policies at schools and not to only single out racism.
McClain confirmed the SAHRC had agreed to help retrain any school managers found guilty of discrimination.
Padayachee originally established an independent anti-racism task team on January 9 but declined to name schools where the abuses were allegedly occurring.
He would only say in a statement that the task team would consist of a number of regional sub-committees and probe allegations that formerly Afrikaans schools which were recently forced to introduce English duel medium tuition were discriminating against non-Afrikaans speakers.
He confirmed that the abuses appeared concentrated in the province’s urban, traditionally white suburban schools.
Mpumalanga’s 2_600 schools currently cater to almost one million pupils, and have been unable to meet the growing demand for seats in urban schools by township pupils dissatisfied with their under-resourced apartheid era schools.
Mpumalanga has been regularly rocked by racist clashes at its schools, including the highprofile attempts to exclude black or English speaking pupils at the Hoerskool Ben Viljoen and Hoerskool General Hertzog high schools in the province’s industrialised Highveld region. – African Eye News Service