At home in a foreign land

“Let the foreigners go back to their own countries and sort out their own problems.” So said a principal last year while rejecting an invitation for his school to participate in an event that explored xenophobia.

He is not alone in expressing such contempt for foreigners who have come to seek a life in South Africa. Recent research among Gauteng schools indicates that the number of schools refusing to enrol migrant learners is on the increase.

But one inner-city Jo’burg school stands out as welcoming among the general xenophobia. Barnato Park High’s principal, Agnes Nugent, says that the school’s proud history of always being open to change and accepting that things are different has given it a strong tradition to work from.

Located on the rough edges of infamous Hillbrow, it has a long history of reinventing itself in the face of changing social realities. It was originally built in 1886 as a school for white girls, and reopened in 1993 as the forward-looking Barnato Park of today, intent on including scholars of any creed and every culture.

But Nugent has another very simple reason for including migrant learners. Children need to be educated and it is not their fault that they are here. Life in their countries is in turmoil.

About 11% of Barnato’s 1 000-strong student body is made up of refugees mainly from Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe, while some hail from provinces such as Limpopo and the Eastern Cape.

The strategy to knit such a diverse group into one school community is a combination of seamlessly including migrant learners where appropriate and, on the other hand, providing forums where the issue of difference can be candidly raised.

English is the school’s medium of instruction, and although the mother tongue of these foreign students is often Portuguese or French, we do not separate them according to their home language or their country of origin.

“We integrate them on the first day of schooling,” says Nugent.

Learners who can’t speak English are helped after hours in the school’s language laboratory. Barnato also encourages learners to participate in extra-mural activities, like art classes every Saturdays. Nugent says these activities also have a therapeutic effect and give learners a sense of belonging.

The fact of xenophobia is also tackled head-on. “Learners make use of anonymous letters to the school management to report any xenophobic behaviour, and should there be open conflict on the issue of difference, we invite both parties to talk about it amicably,” says Nugent.

Learners start engaging with the concept of xenophobia in Grade 8, and this is dealt with more intensively at Grade 11 level. Two Burundian learners, Jackson Bizimana and Parfait Bagira, have established themselves as part of the Barnato Park community.

Bizimana came to South Africa in 1994 with his family, fleeing the violence in his country. Now in Grade 10, Bizimana says that he has never been subjected to humiliating treatment such as name-calling, and says that in his time at Barnato, I made a lot of friends and can even speak some of the local languages.

Like Bizimana, Bagira fled the war in his home country. He arrived in South Africa in 2001 with his uncle, but misses his family who stayed behind. While he loves life in South Africa, he says he would return to Burundi if things improved there. Bagira, who is also in Grade 10, feels at home at Barnato, although I had one experience of being verbally abused.

He says he struggles with Afrikaans, but “I am working hard to understand it better”. Bagira’s education is supported by the Jesuit Refugee Service, which pays for his school fees and uniform.

Many schools base their reluctance to include migrant learners on problems such as the inability of parents to pay school fees, incorrect uniforms and the learners often being overage. But, as Nugent points out, these issues are not exclusively associated with foreign learners.

“Out of the entire parent body, only 45% pay school fees. Some apply for exemption, but others just don’t pay. Despite this, we make sure that no child suffers as a result. We do not discuss this with them and even their teachers do not know which learners are in arrears,” she says.

Fast Facts

There are two different population categories of persons who arrive from elsewhere, namely migrants and forced migrants. Forced migrants are refugees and asylum seekers who are forced to leave their homes for reasons such as civil wars and environmental disasters.

The number of forced migrants in South Africa is steadily increasing, from a few thousand in 1997 to more than 110 000 in 2003.
Migrant learners move with their families from both inside and outside South African borders, typically to urban areas in search of job opportunities.

Many forced migrants journey for months before reaching South Africa. As a result, migrant learners are often overage.

Most migrants based in Johannesburg choose to send their children to inner-city schools, because they believe xenophobia to be rife in the townships. They also often cannot afford the transport costs as most are faced with unemployment and struggle to find permanent accommodation. In addition, service providers such as the Department of Home Affairs, Lawyers for Human Rights and the Jesuit Refugee Service are based downtown.

More and more schools are reluctant to admit migrant learners. Reasons given by these schools include the inability to pay schools fees, learners being overage, language issues and a lack of documentation and uniforms.

Schools often withhold information about fees exemption from parents who cannot afford to pay.

A Johannesburg-based refugee organisation has 93 learners awaiting admission for 2005. Thirty of these learners were not placed at a school in 2004 either.

Various policies and laws prohibit schools from excluding a learner of school-going age of any nationality on the grounds of language, age, documentation or inability to pay school fees. The Department of Education language policy for foreign nationals also exempts learners from taking two languages in the first five years of their schooling.