The Young Communist League (YCL) is ”flabbergasted and disturbed” by a school that still flies the old South African flag and sings the old national anthem, the YCL said on Wednesday.
Pupils at the Christelike Volksonderwys primary school in Lichtenburg, North West, apparently still sing Die Stem at morning assemblies.
YCL spokesperson Castro Ngobese said it was regrettable that 12 years into democracy there were still institutions that use apartheid tactics of indoctrination and racial supremacy through education.
”This is a clear indication that some sections of our society have not embraced the process of change and reconciliation,” he said.
A North West provincial government spokesperson, Cornelius Monama, said Premier Edna Molewa had ordered the department of education to investigate.
”The premier rejects the statement by the school that this was a cultural expression,” he said.
The primary school is a private institution but receives an annual grant from the education department.
Monama said the incident amounted to an insult to the new democracy and the efforts to build national unity.
”That it was done for cultural reasons is an excuse because some people still desire to return to the past and this is unacceptable.
”We owe allegiance to our own national symbols,” Monama said.
Ngobese said the YCL condemned this act of ”unpatriotism” and disrespect for the country’s national symbols.
He called on the education ministry, the human rights commission and the arts and culture ministry to intervene in the matter.
”This underscores the struggle and the sacrifices of the students of 1976 who struggled for a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic, single education system that is line with the democratic and constitutional dispensation,” Ngobese said. — Sapa