‘No racism’ in Roodepoort school row

Published Aug 23, 2015

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Johannesburg - Nothing much ever happens in Davidsonville, Roodepoort. A trip into the township itself, home of working-class coloured folk, is just as uneventful.

The most a casual visitor will take back from the trip is the unsightly mounds of disused mines, the stray dogs jostling for space against jaywalkers on the potholed streets and the great aura of nothingness about the place.

Watching paint dry could be a spectacle here. It is dry; winter makes it even drier. When the chance to do something comes – anything, really – the alacrity at which the community springs into action makes the cheetah a sloth. They move with speed.

The appointment of a primary school principal becomes a communal issue; that they do not want her unites them even more.

It becomes a cause around which to rally. Grown men take their shirts off, swear like sailors and act like complete idiots in front of their children.

A husband and wife duo have been arrested for smuggling a gun into the school and pointing it, says local police spokeswoman Warrant Officer Nonhlanhla Khumalo.

Since May this year until now, altogether nine cases have been reported by the school against members of the community, ranging from malicious damage to property to assault.

A petrol bomb, which failed to explode, was hurled at the principal’s car, says Khumalo.

For the record, Roodepoort Primary School, the only such facility in the township, was closed last Friday after the Gauteng Education MEC, Panyaza Lesufi, reported that the environment was not conducive for proper learning and teaching to take place after incidents of racial tension.

At the centre of these racial allegations is the appointment of a black principal, Nomathemba Molefe. But many of those The Sunday Independent spoke to are quick to dispel the notion that their protest is racial.

The township is mixed, they hasten to point out. “We live together as one,” says Vochen Foster, whose smattering of Setswana in her Afrikaans diction makes her speech unusual.

She’s friends with Gladys Matsheletshele. What binds them together in friendship is that they rent backyard rooms on the same property.

They are a rare breed in Davidsonville – mothers who want their children to go to school.

“I want my child to go to school,” Foster says emphatically. “What will she do at home?”

Her child Camira nods in agreement: she wants no part of the adult skirmishes.

In the few days the school has been closed as the Gauteng Education Department seeks to find a solution to the impasse, the children have been bussed to Lufhereng Primary School in Protea Glen, Soweto.

This too irked the parents, who have chosen to keep their kids at home. “My child will not go to that school. This is the only school whole generations of my family have known,” says a woman, who spits this view.

She declines to give her name.

But hers is expressive of the sentiment of the community, or at least that part of the community that wants Molefe and her deputy, who is also black, out.

It is not their skin colour which makes the two unattractive to the community, one woman ventures: “Her appointment letter was signed at the home of the chairman of the SGB.” The education authorities could not counter this claim.

Spokeswoman Phumla Sekhonyane could only say: “The provincial government has appointed a task team to deal with the current challenges faced by Roodepoort Primary School.”

The work of the task team is to mediate and find a lasting solution to the difficulties faced by the school and to ensure the education of the pupils is no longer compromised.

“The task team has been given the space to conduct its work without any undue influence from the department, any group or individuals. It is on this basis we have taken a decision to cease making public any information that has a potential of being seen as determining a pre-perceived outcome of this process of influencing the ultimate decision of the task team until the team has concluded its work.”

The task team includes such eminent persons as clergyman Gift Moerane, the Reverend Frank Chikane and musician Yvonne Chaka Chaka.

But in the meantime parents continue the stand-off – they will not send their children to “that dirty school with no electricity”.

Have you been to that school, they demand to know?

Only a few, like Foster, allow their kids on the bus.

“That principal is not qualified to be in that position. There are teachers with better qualifications than her,” the nameless mother continues.

A Mr Strauss, who was acting for five years, resigned after he was overlooked, she adds.

Mr Strauss is coloured.

“This used to be one of the best performing schools around here, especially under Mr Parker. Now standards have dropped.”

None of those we speak to wants to entertain the racial slant to the argument “when there are xenophobic attacks everywhere else”, the woman of the moment says.

“Davidsonville did not see even one incident.”

But the K-word is still hurled, especially during heated confrontation. Black police officers who have had to monitor the area have had their fair share of abuse, one woman threatening an officer.

“I will hunt you down, my boy,” she apparently said.

While Roodepoort Primary used to be predominantly coloured, the ratios have changed now – there are more black kids. The parents seem to have come to terms with this but not the idea of a black principal.

And for this they are evidently prepared to bite the bullet, figuratively, and perhaps, heaven forbid, literally.

Sunday Independent

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