Why South African schools still experience racist incidents

South Africa has not done enough to overcome the legacy of apartheid, and there is nothing in the curriculum at schools that talks about anti-racism. 

This is according to Teresa Oakley-Smith, founder and CEO of the transformation and diversity consultant firm Diversi-T. 

This week, Johannesburg private school De La Salle was marred by allegations of racism.

TimesLIVE's sister publication Sowetan reported that more than 50 current and former pupils accused the Johannesburg Catholic school of institutional racism. 

Last week it also emerged that parents of two black pupils from Bryandale Primary school in Bryanston criticised the school after their children were allegedly abused by an Indian child at the school.

The Indian pupil allegedly said to the two boys “you stupid black people are so predictable” while they were playing at the school gate.

Last year, about 12 pupils at the Pretoria Girls High School were suspended “for racism” at the school. At the time, the Gauteng department of education said this was triggered by alleged racial connotations, micro-aggressions and complaints about black pupils, which were ventilated through a WhatsApp group consisting of white pupils.

Oakley-Smith said the attitude of children and teachers usually stems from their home environment. She said we haven't as a country done nearly enough to overcome the legacy of apartheid.

“If a child hears his or her parents saying negative things about children of another race, Africans, for example, she/he will assume that's the norm — that's the right thing to do because children don’t do what parents say, but they do what they see parents doing,” she said. 

She said there is nothing in the school curriculum about anti-racism.

She said schools need to have “I believe” in the curriculum and an understanding of what racism is, where it comes from, why it was negative, and looking at our history — what caused it and what can be done to overcome it.

She said anti-racism needs to be part and parcel of the curriculum, and could be included in the life orientation subject. 

“The other thing is that our teachers haven’t themselves been educated on issues of racism because it's also not part of the curriculum for teachers. Children spend most of their day at school, and they spend more time with their teachers than they do with their parents,” she said. 

She said the role of the teacher was critical, and understanding race should be a very important part of the curriculum for trainee teachers to deal with it when it happens.

She added that the leadership of schools was often inadequate in dealing with these situations when they occur.

“Either they dismiss them and say, 'oh, it's nothing, he was just joking' or they don't want to get involved because often they don't know how to get involved. 

“Many schools don't have a policy on racism. And if you don't have a policy, then how do you know how to deal with it?”

Oakley-Smith said there was a need for an effective policy on racism which talks to school principals, school governing bodies and educators to be able to deal with these issues as they came up. She said addressing racism needed to be a community initiative.

“I've been doing this work for 30 years and we still have a very long way to go, which is rather depressing,” she said. 

Oakley-Smith said the national department of education needed to first understand what racism was, develop a programme which will speak to a particular province and ensure there was a policy on racism which applied to that particular province. 

She said the department, after developing that programme, should visit all the colleges of education and universities where students were studying to become teachers. 

“They need to broadcast the department's stand on racism and explain how it should be handled in school. I think it would also be very helpful to have anti-racism or diversity sessions with school governing bodies,” she said. 

She said this may take a long time, but SGBs should be involved as they are very influential in what happens in schools.