This Thursday, a kindergarten teacher at the Schweiser-Reneke school in the Northwest province of South Africa was suspended for ‘segregating’ her students. This teacher sent home a ‘first day of school’ picture of her class- in the photo, seventeen white children are circled around a large table in the front of the class while four black children are excluded at a small table in the corner.
This sparked outrage amongst the parents of the community- as student activist Mcebo Dlamini posted on social media, the ‘most provoking’ aspect of the image “is not that black kids are ostracized from white kids, it is that this is common in our supposedly post-apartheid Africa”.
According to the Education Minister, Sello Lehari, this is not the first case of racism at this particular school. Racist tensions linger in South Africa following the collapse of Apartheid 25 years prior, and social media controversies over race are not an uncommon sight.
Although the teacher claims that there was no racist intent in the photo- some people speculate the ‘segregation’ may have been due to language barriers- the case is still under investigation.
I thought that this was a really sad story, especially considering that Apartheid has been over for a quarter century in South Africa. Although I can’t say I am surprised that this happened given the brutality of Apartheid, I am definitely wondering how this teacher could have possibly done this ‘unintentionally’ or how they could have not foreseen any issues when sending this picture home. I wonder how the school will respond to this given the amount of protest and the fact that this clearly wasn’t the first ‘offense’ this school had committed- will they put more systems into place to ensure equality amongst the students? If this really is a language issue, then I feel like there should have been more attention given to those students rather than separating them from the Afrikaans speakers. Regardless, I hope that this will send a message to other schools and institutions in South Africa to start implementing more changes and allowing for more acceptance in the community.