School rules? Hmm, I’ll tell you about school rules.
When I was a pupil at Pretoria High School for Girls, way, way back in the 1980s, in the depths of apartheid, every facet of our appearance was regulated, from the length of our fringes (above the eyebrows) to the height of our white bobby socks (one fold only).
We were required to wear regulation underwear (green knickers so big they could be used as flotation devices); we were subjected to frequent fingernail checks; if you were caught off schoolgrounds not wearing your school beret, you were subjected to a spot fine.
Not even the teachers were spared; they weren’t allowed to wear trousers. And what about the men? Well, there were no male teachers on staff.
We had our own hair controversy in 1984. A girl in standard nine (that’s Grade 11 if you’re a millennial) was called out by the headmistress in the middle of morning assembly because of her new hairstyle; her hair had been shaved at the back to above her neckline. It would be considered pretty tame today, but by ’80s standards it was daring. Miss Mullins did not approve and dispatched the pupil to her own hairdresser to have her hair “fixed”.
I had thought the school was quite liberal since the history department refused to follow the government syllabus for South African history. Representatives of the PFP, the forerunner of the DA, came to talk to us about constitutional reform. But that was as far as it went.
From the latest controversy over the young PHSG lady’s afro, it appears not much has changed. The pupils are still required to conform to a school template of a young lady. But that’s the crux of the matter. The template is out of date.
When I was a teenager, it was easy for me to conform because rules were made with me and my classmates in mind. It was easy for a white girl.
But 30 years later, the school body is no longer homogeneously lily white and the authoritarianism of the 1980s does not wash in post-apartheid South Africa. I would have hoped that the rules, if they have to be there at all, would move with the times to take South Africa’s multiplicity of cultures into account. That they would celebrate differences instead of vilifying them.
And, at a school that’s supposed to be producing young, independent women, proud of their bodies and their heritage, there should be little room for unbending rules that promote uniformity.
* Robyn Leary is the assistant editor of the Cape Argus.