'Traumatising' diversity training suspended at Cape Town high school

Parents at a high school in Cape Town are demanding answers from the provincial  education department after a diversity training workshop left some pupils traumatised.

The workshop was meant to create awareness and empower children to embrace each other’s differences — after a racial incident at the school in May — but the radical manner in which facilitator Asanda Ngoasheng introduced the topic “opened a racial can of worms”, according to some parents.

They said the facilitator told pupils whites were the only people capable of being racist as they still held power and read a poem describing Jesus Christ as “this blue-eyed and blond-haired Jesus”.

The poem referred to heaven as a “white and patriarchal heaven”, and suggested the 12 disciples “could have been queer, the holy trinity some weird twisted love triangle and the Holy Ghost transgender”.

The provincial education department confirmed it had suspended the diversity workshop after parents expressed concerns. Education MEC David Maynier said: “We have suspended the intervention at Fish Hoek High School, based on concerns raised by some parents regarding the content of the training and the manner in which it was communicated and managed.”

Maynier said he understood parents’ concerns and frustrations, “and we are taking this matter very seriously”.

“A review of the training content, and the manner in which it was managed and communicated, is under way. Once the process has been finalised, an outcome and way forward will be determined. Our district support team will provide assistance to any learners who require support.”

A parent, who asked not to be named as she has a minor child at the school, described the  session as “damaging and divisive”.

“For the first time my son, who is 16 and has no reference to previous dispensations in this country, referred to his friends by the colour of their skin after he was called a white patriarchal supremacist by the facilitator. What this woman has done is opened a racial can of worms because for the first time, my son came home that afternoon and said ... 'my black friend so and so' and I had to ask 'why are you suddenly referring to them as black friends?'

“We had to sit down with him and we had a long conversation ... what this lady was talking about was not diversity training, but what she was doing was weaponising a former race dispensation.”

Ngoasheng, who describes herself as an award-winning speaker, political analyst, academic and diversity trainer, said while she was saddened by the backlash, she was not surprised given the country’s painful past.

“The session follows a successful session we ran at the school with grade 12s at the end of September, which had similar content to the session now under contention but was not queried, nor did it lead to any complaints,” she said.

“Considering our experiences, however, we are not surprised at the emotional response to the diversity session because discussions of race and racism in our country are still tinged with the memory of our painful past. We do this work precisely because we want to develop a culture of dialogue and debate on these issues without sowing further division and discord.”

Ngoasheng said being made aware of past and present injustices is often painful and “can feel like trauma, but always needs to be seen in the context of the pain and hurt inflicted daily that is so normalised and invisibilised”.

“The work aims at building resilience in all to be able to have more equitable conversations,” she said.

The workshop followed protests by pupils in May after a teacher allegedly used racial slurs, the K-word and N-word during an Afrikaans lesson.

At the time the school acknowledged it had “fallen short of its school’s values and needed to do more to uphold the dignity and equality of all at the school”.

After being suspended amid the allegations, an investigation later found the teacher “not guilty” but she resigned nonetheless. Diversity training was one of the recommendations made by the provincial education department after the incident.

During the introduction of what was meant to be a weeklong workshop, which teachers were not allowed to attend, parents allege children were told they would initially have a two-and-a-half-hour training session followed by another four hours, which represented 400 years of slavery.

“My son initially sent me a message saying this diversity training is getting pretty wild,” said the parent. 

“Basically what she said came down to this ... all white children are white patriarchal supremacists and they were born that way and they can't change it. Therefore they are racist by birth. She said any incident involving a black child ... where a black person makes a comment that is racial, it isn’t racism but that’s prejudice.”

Parents said while they were not against their children receiving diversity training, they objected to how it was done.

Fish Hoek resident Cliff Smith said the problem is that the workshop “wasn't a reconciliation workshop”.

“From what we can see, her area of expertise seems to be more like for working with adults ... maybe university students. She was completely inappropriate to deal with high schoolchildren.”

Ngoasheng dismissed the suggestion. “We have been providing diversity training to various schools, universities and corporates across South Africa for many years and even have a diversity and social justice curriculum implemented. Our experience has shown us that South Africa is a society that struggles to hold conversations about diversity, especially on race and racism,” she said.

She said the teachers were kept out of the introductory session as they had their own diversity workshop.

“As such, only we as the facilitators and a psychosocial team from the education department were in the room for the facilitation to provide a safe space for victims of racism and other discrimination at the school. School counsellors were allowed in sessions.”

DA MP Cilliers Brink said on Friday: “Genuine and constructive conversations about diversity will never succeed if they are conducted in an environment of bullying.”

Meanwhile, the FF Plus threatened to lodge a complaint with the Human Rights Commission (HRC) against the education department, saying the session left some children in need of counselling. 

The party said a pupil who managed to leave the hall told a teacher her classmates were being traumatised. The teacher was told to leave the hall when he attempted to intervene.

Recordings of the session revealed some pupils did not approve of the statements being made, said the party's spokesperson on basic education Dr Wynand Boshoff.

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