The Federation for School Governing Bodies in South African Schools took the provincial government to court in 2012, arguing that the provincial regulation that gave the power to decide when a school should take more pupils to the department of education was taking away the parents' rights as defined in the Schools Act.In his last Constitutional Court judgment before retirement, Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke found that the provincial regulations giving the Gauteng education department the last say were lawful.The court, however, affirmed that governing bodies, representing parents, were partners in the running of schools.The federation's CEO, Paul Colditz, called the ruling "totalitarian" and said that power was being taken away from parents and given to the state."Instead of parents being allowed to decide where their children go to school, what language they learn in and what religion they are taught, now the government decides."The court found that the "feeder zones" allowing parents to place children in a school if they worked or lived within 5km of it had been intended to be a temporary arrangement. It ordered the Gauteng government to determine new permanent feeder zones for more than 2000 schools.The government must create within the next year feeder zones that are not entirely based on geography and would thus exclude pupils from poorer families from suburban schools.The court ruling was a victory for NGO Equal Education, which argued the feeder zones kept poorer township children out of better-functioning suburban schools.Premier David Makhura called the ruling a victory."The judgment is welcomed as it also assists the province in its broader imperative of spatial transformation."Colditz said the changing of the feeder zones would be used to allow English-speaking students into Afrikaans-only schools, making them dual-medium...