Johannesburg - The principal of Roodepoort Primary School was escorted by the police after reporting for duty to protect her from parents and members of the community who were baying for her blood this morning.
Gauteng Education Department spokesman Phumla Sekhonyane said the people in the area didn’t want black teachers and the black principal and her two black deputies.
Parents prevented their children from going to class, which has been the case for over a week. The parents brandished placards in front of the school gate. Some of the placards read “MEC has failed Davidsonville”; “Ons is gatvol”; “We want the MEC”; and “Genoeg is genoeg”.
Police were brought in to help normalise the situation.
As soon as they saw Nothemba Molefe on Thursday, and that she was followed by a police van, they started chanting for her to leave. Some in the group shouted that they wanted a coloured principal as the area where they lived was coloured. Others said the reason they did not want her was that proper channels were not followed in her appointment.
Sekhonyane said when Molefe was appointed in 2011, the acting principal at the time lodged a complaint saying the appointment was not procedural. His appeal failed and he resigned. That’s when the problems started.
“They are saying coloured teachers are being overlooked for black teachers,” Sekhonyane said.
She said their investigations revealed that there was no wrongdoing in Molefe’s appointment.
Veronica James, who has a grandchild at the school, said Molefe had dropped the standard of the school since taking over. James said a Mr Strauss had been acting for 11 months before Molefe’s appointment in 2011.
Everything was good at the time but things started going wrong when Molefe was appointed.
“We had an acting principal… His application was tampered with and he was told that he had submitted an incomplete application.
“We don’t have problems with the race of the employees, we only want the ones with the best interests of people at heart. We don’t want people who drop the standards of the school.
“When Mr Strauss ran the school before Molefe’s appointment, everything worked fine. We were happy with Mr Phillips who acted for three months last year (when Molefe was home as the community fought her appointment).”
Another woman who has a grandchild at the school said she wanted a coloured principal and accused Molefe and the two deputies of not knowing how to do their job.
But some parents said allegations that they were racist were not true.
Another parent, Cliff Murray, said they wanted a principal of any colour but not Molefe because “she paid for the job”. “We are not racist, the SGB (school governing body) told us she paid (to secure the post).”
The Department of Education has lodged an urgent application to get an interdict preventing parents from disrupting the school. – Additional reporting by Sapa
The Star