While Hoërskool Overvaal in Vereeniging refuses to admit 55 black English-speaking pupils, many other Afrikaans schools have become multilingual.
Among the most recent to do so are Hoërskool Jan Viljoen and Hoërskool Riebeeckrand in Randfontein on the Gauteng West Rand. Both will each admit up to 105 English-speaking Grade 8 pupils this year.
Education department officials approached the two schools in November because the only English-medium high school in Randfontein was bursting at the seams.
By Thursday, 67 English-speaking pupils had enrolled at Riebeeckrand and 77 at Jan Viljoen.
Hoërskool Riebeeckrand principal Annelize van den Berg said: "I think it's the correct decision that we've made and I feel good about it. Nobody came to me to say: 'We don't like it; we don't want it.'
"The teachers and other learners are very positive. I am really experiencing a good feeling among the teachers about this."He did not believe that Hoërskool Overvaal was deliberately trying to keep black pupils out. He said that on December 5, the school had a waiting list of 142 Afrikaans-speaking and 19 English-speaking pupils.
"They are turning children away because they don't have space. If you don't build enough schools and create capacity, you will see a repeat of this.
"Race is no longer an issue. It's a choice of the parent and the learner to be educated in either an Afrikaans, Tswana or English school.
"Out of the 2000 public schools in Gauteng, only 135 are still single-medium Afrikaans schools and those schools are really full to capacity."
Fanie Botes, principal of Hoërskool Erasmus in Bronkhorstspruit, about 50km east of Pretoria, said most lessons in grades 10 to 12 were in English and Afrikaans...