Everything that has happened at Brackenfell High School in Cape Town sits badly, from a segregated “private” matric dance to subsequent violent clashes. It looks bad because it is bad.
A white man, clad in black, takes his baseball bat and slams it into the back of an EFF-supporting black woman, not once, but twice, as someone in the background shouts “hardloop”.
This was no fight. The woman was walking away, her back turned. This was a cowardly act of violence. It looks bad because it is bad. No matter the context, it is unacceptable.
The violent scenes have their origins in an all-white Grade 12 farewell in October, organised by a group of parents. It was arranged “because the matrics have had such a bad year” and Covid-19 regulations meant matric dances were not permitted. Ultimately, 72 tickets were sold, all of them to white pupils. There are a total of 250 matric pupils in the school.
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A parent who helped to organise the event said she could not explain how it ended up being attended exclusively by white pupils.
“Why were there no non-whites? 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.
At an institution with nearly 500 pupils of colour, it cannot be acceptable that an event linked to a school, whether private or public, can happen without a single non-white pupil there. This reasoning doesn’t hold water.
As reported in Sunday Times Daily last week, many black parents and pupils said the event’s racial make-up “underpinned allegations of an unfriendly attitude by the predominantly white student body, teachers and parents”.
“The problem at this school is not in the matric farewell, it’s racism,” said a parent who didn’t want to be named.
One pupil said black youngsters at the school felt marginalised because racism and hostility by some white pupils went unchecked and unpunished.
Former US first lady Michelle Obama, in her book Becoming, speaks of “optics” being vital. The optics of this event — how it looks — are bad. And that’s because it is bad. Two teachers attended the event, making it look even worse.
Fast-forward to Monday, when the EFF held a protest outside the school. It seems the party’s actions were peaceful until parents, mostly white, instigated the violent scenes that resulted in shots being fired, stun grenades being used and riot police being called in. One person, a 39-year-old, was arrested.
As much as many groups, including the Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools (Fedsas), might hide behind the event being private and criticise the EFF for “politicising” the issue, it’s hard to see beyond how bad the situation looks.
Other groups, including the Right2Know Campaign and the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), have been critical of the parents’ attempts to block the protests. Again, it looks bad.
The Western Cape and national education departments need to step in. They need to investigate and they need to, honestly and openly, listen to the concerns of parents who feel marginalised in the school community. The SAHRC says it is investigating goings-on there and it’s important it does.
It is not enough for the chairperson of the school governing body, Dr Guillaume Smit, to say the parents organising the event “didn’t want to intentionally discriminate against anyone”. The point is, they did discriminate, and they do not seem to have any self-awareness of how wrong this is.
An investigation will answer some questions on the arrangement of the function, but it also needs to look into how the school can change attitudes.
The longer these claims go unanswered, the harder it becomes to look past black and white.
