Girls' High teachers face disciplinary action after racism allegations

Investigators recommend disciplinary action against five teachers and that Girls' High must address diversity, cultural inclusion and social cohesion.

Black pupils were divided into ethnic groups to depict apartheid-style settlements during a high school geography lesson while their white peers looked on.

Information on the lesson, which left the black pupils "humiliated and embarrassed", is contained in a 62-page report commissioned by Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi on allegations of racism at Pretoria High School for Girls .

Harris Nupen Molebatsi Attorneys investigated the school following a protest in August by pupils over hair regulations.

Other allegations were that black pupils were forbidden to speak in their mother tongues, that white teachers and pupils called black pupils "k*****s and monkeys" and that senior teachers were flippant in dismissing complaints by black pupils.

Lesufi released the report and its recommendations on Friday .

The investigators recommended disciplinary action against five teachers. They said the school needed to address diversity, cultural inclusion and social cohesion.

The report said telling black pupils to "sort out their hair" must stop.

Lesufi said yesterday that he trembled when he read the report.

He said the Nelson Mandela and Ahmed Kathrada foundations would help eliminate racism and discrimination at the school. They would work with retired Constitutional Court Justice Yvonne Mokgoro to implement the recommendations.

"We just want to make the school become a symbol of nonracialism. We believe out of this crisis we can formulate a model school," said Lesufi.

He said he did not expect teachers to behave the way they had.

"If they're still trapped in the past, it's indeed shocking," he said of the teachers. "What is more worrying is that this might just be a small portion of what is happening broadly in our former Model C schools."

The report said that a pupil complained about a teacher who had arranged black pupils into ethnic groups. The teacher told the investigators that the lesson was about development issues and the history of South Africa.

"She did not have the perception that the black learners in her class were traumatised."

The teacher said the lesson was to illustrate the past. But the investigators said the teacher, who has 32 years' experience, behaved inappropriately and was offensive. Her actions were racially discriminatory and she showed "poor judgment".

The committee said the school failed to take disciplinary action after the pupil's father complained about the incident.

It recommended that the teacher write an apology to the pupil's father and that the school discipline the teacher.

The school could not be reached for comment yesterday.