SANS SOUCI Girls’ High School pupils have called on the school to employ a black female principal and do away with its “discriminatory” code of conduct.
Some pupils say the school's code has left them feeling humiliated.
About 300 past and present Sans Souci pupils and their parents filled the school hall yesterday for a meeting with the school governing body and Education MEC Debbie Schäfer.
In a memorandum handed to Schäfer, the pupils demanded the immediate dismissal of current principal Charmaine Murray, without pay or benefits, and that the department immediately institute a full and comprehensive investigation into her conduct and school practices during her tenure as principal.
The girls have also demanded that the school take action against individual teachers who perpetuate racism, the scrapping of their yellow merit books, within which many pupils were given demerits for speaking isiXhosa at school, and that students who were unable to pay their fees should not be excluded from school activities.
“We demand the revision of the code of conduct because it is discriminatory, subjective and systematically demoralising, set up to disempower, disenfranchise and humiliate the students of the school,” the memorandum reads.
“The school is made up of a majority of black students, but the vast majority of educators are white. We demand that the school hire more teachers of colour so that the staff body is more diverse. It cannot be that we are consistently subjected to whiteness when there are qualified black teachers.”
After the memorandum was handed to Schäfer, and she explained to pupils and parents that due process would need to be followed before the dismissal of any staff, while the department would thoroughly investigate allegations brought to them, the MEC promptly left without explanation – to the dismay of the audience.
“The governing body has committed to review the code of conduct. Give us time now to do this investigation and we will take whatever action is necessary,” Schäfer said.
In another incident, more pupils have confirmed they have been fined R10 for speaking isiXhosa at Holy Cross High School. It has emerged that the fine also applies to Afrikaans.
The girls say if they do not pay the fine, they are sent to detention the same day. The fine has doubled from R5 last year.
The Maitland school, which denied this practice on Sunday, will now investigate, said principal Michael Fouché. He said they would release a statement today.
Fouché had previously said the school encourages pupils to speak English at school to aid their language skills in this subject, and isiXhosa and Afrikaans were offered as first additional language subjects.
A pupil, who asked not to be named for fear of victimisation, said: “If the student leaders find out you are speaking Xhosa to a Xhosa-speaking person, even if it's one word, a word of exclamation, you get fined R10. You have to pay that R10 or you stay in detention that same day.
“The teachers know this is happening. They also fine you.”
Their names were written down and before school ended the girls were taken out of class to detention for one hour, she explained.
“When I first came to the school, I (had to sit in detention) all the time, but I have had to adapt to speaking English,” she said.
“If you do complain, they tell you it's the school rules and you can't change them. We feel like it is discriminatory towards us because we also want to speak our languages. But we've had to adapt because they tell us if you want to go to school here, then you have to speak English all the time.”
Another pupil said parents were aware of this policy.
“There is nothing they (the parents) can do. Even when they try and ask, they tell you it's school rules and you can't change them,” she said.
“It's also Afrikaans. You must only speak English,” another pupil said.
The girls do not know where the collected money goes.