An unofficial matric ball organised by parents at a Cape Town school has caused racial tension after it was attended exclusively by white pupils.
The event was organised by a group of Afrikaans-speaking parents at Brackenfell after the school was forced to call off the official matric ball due to Covid-19 regulations.
Two teachers attended the ball, however, and the video production company contracted by the school to cover all its events uploaded a video of the event on its YouTube channel.
The title of the video – since removed – gave the impression that it was the official school ball.
One of the event organisers, who asked to remain anonymous, insisted it was not designed to exclude black pupils. “The parents organised it because the matrics have had such a bad year and because the department of education wouldn’t give the school permission to organise a matric farewell because of Covid,” she said.
Preparations for the event began before the move to alert level 1 of the lockdown when only 50 people were allowed in a venue.
“There were only 50 tickets available then. Then we went over to level 1 and they allowed for 50% capacity at a venue so we could expand the number of tickets to 100,” said the parent. “Because the school wasn’t allowed to be involved in any matric farewell, they refused to allow any advertising or marketing of the event on school grounds.
“The result is that the children were told on WhatsApp groups about the event and the tickets were first come, first served because we only had 100 available and there’s 250 matric pupils.”
The parent said the video production company offered to cover the function without charge because the organisers had such a low budget.
“The funds were gathered through ticket sales of which more than 80% went for the venue,” she said. Only 72 tickets were sold for R500 each.
Coloured and black children speak about how they are being called h***** and k*****
— Brackenfell High parent
However, for many black parents and pupils the controversy about the event’s racial make-up underpinned allegations of an unfriendly attitude by the predominantly white student body, teachers and parents.
A coloured Brackenfell High parent, who asked not to be named, said black pupils felt marginalised, while racism and hostility by some white pupils had gone unchecked and unpunished. “The problem at this school is not in the matric farewell. It’s racism,” said the parent.
“Coloured and black children speak about how they are being called h***** and k*****. My child is being told she must get over apartheid and that she is not a product of apartheid.”
The parent said earlier this year at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement a deluge of stories were posted anonymously on an Instagram page detailing stories of alleged racism experienced by current and former pupils.
“This event wasn’t sanctioned by the school, but there is a deeper racial issue. The deputy head boy called a child a racial slur and nothing happened,” said the parent.
“Because Brackenfell has one of the largest school populations in the region, they take the cream of the crop from the surrounding black and coloured communities. My child was saying, ‘it feels like the only thing we are good for is sport.’”
The parent said children didn’t mix with each other and that this was a recent phenomenon.
“When the children say black lives matter, the Afrikaans children say boere lives matter. And I tell her, boere lives do matter, but so do black lives. The underlying issue is racial inequality. The Afrikaans and black children are getting a very bad picture of each other.”
A former pupil who finished matric last year said animosity between the mostly white Afrikaans matric class of 2020 and the mostly black and coloured English class has been worse than any year before.
“The Afrikaans learners were always favoured above the English learners, and the majority of English learners were always people of colour,” said the ex-pupil.
“There’s always been a sense of discrimination and favouritism even in the class. In a subject class like physics, for example, they would have to speak English and Afrikaans, but the majority of the time they would only cater to Afrikaans children and be speaking Afrikaans.
Why were there no nonwhites? I think it was because we weren’t allowed to advertise it on school property.
The parent who helped to organise the farewell event said she could not explain how it ended up being attended exclusively by white pupils.
“Why were there no nonwhites? I think it was because we weren’t allowed to advertise it on school property to reach out to every single matric learner,” she said.
“There was no official invite because we weren’t allowed to do it on school property, we weren’t even allowed to do it outside the school gate.
“We relied on our children and their friends to spread the word because that’s all we were allowed to do; we weren’t even allowed to put on social media that ‘all the matric parents of Brackenfell can contact us’ for this, we weren’t even allowed to use the school’s name.
“I would have been very happy if all 100 tickets could have been sold and if children from all races and cultures and language could attend, but only 72 were able to finish off their 12 years of their school careers, which is actually very sad.
“Every single one of the children in matric in Brackenfell High School deserved to be at a matric ball, that’s my opinion, and as a result of Covid that’s also been scuppered.”
Black parents also complained that despite the school’s ever-growing black student cohort, only two black teachers had been employed since 1994.
Western Cape education department spokesperson Bronagh Hammond reiterated that the event was private.
“The school had nothing to do with the organisation or management of that event. Two educators were invited as guests,” said Hammond.
She said it was true that the school had two coloured teachers despite having 154 black pupils, 334 coloured pupils, four Indian pupils and 975 white pupils.
She said the Western Cape education department had not had any previous complaints regarding alleged discrimination at the school this year.
“The district is engaging with the school and learners on these allegations,” said Hammond.
