Pretoria girls high: Political parties and reckless media fan the ...

The writer says that Pretoria High School for Girls is a beautiful school with some hard working and dedicated teachers. But, like all institutions, it is not perfect.

My daughter goes to Pretoria High School for Girls, the school that has been on the news, again, for racism. She wanted to be at Girls High because of its history and pedigree. She wanted to be part of the school because of the sports that it offers, which the private school, closer to our house, does not. 

She wanted to attend Girls High because it is a girls’ only school and she wanted a break from the pressure of having boys in the same classes. She wanted to attend Girls High because it is a bigger school that would enable her to find wider networks of friends and to meet new people.

She did make some good friends, but she also found that no school is immune from meanness and bullying. She found a niche in water polo, a sport that she hadn’t known she would like. Water polo had been in decline at the school and it took a lot of work by girls and their parents to rebuild. The girls worked hard, playing for a club, and have made steady progress.

Being in a bigger school, an old, traditional school came with its own challenges. Things that had been permissible at the smaller private school were not, so a mind-set shift had to happen. I had to keep reminding her that the world doesn’t easily shift. Mostly you have to find ways of manoeuvring around the world as you find it while looking out for ways to make it better when possible. Being my child she questions everything, which is a good thing, but it does take a toll. Learning what to question, when to question and how to question is a work in progress.

As a parent there are rules at the school that I have found odd, and some that seem a bit archaic. There doesn’t seem to be any good reason why the girls shouldn’t run during break or play with balls but should rather sit on the grounds like Victorian ladies.

When I have thought it necessary I have raised issues dealing with the school in general and in relation to specific issues pertaining to my girl. My criticism of the school management, which I have raised with them, is that the school doesn’t seem to want parents to be very involved. I can understand that. With it being such a big school with about 1 500 girls that it might seem daunting or nigh on impossible to have parents more involved, but there are ways around such things.

When the story of the “Whites Only” WhatsApp group first broke almost three weeks ago now, I was upset for the black girls and at the school. I felt that when the matter had first been brought to the school’s attention last year it could have been handled better. I was especially upset for my daughter because two of the girls in the group were girls that she looked up to as older sisters, girls that had taken her under their wings since she started at Girls High, girls with whom she had played water polo and travelled the country.

Neither of the two girls said anything in the group. I tried to guide my daughter to make a distinction between those who had said something and those who were merely added to the group and said nothing. In her justified anger she wondered whether those girls who had always been there for her shared the views of those who made racist comments. 

I know these girls and their parents from water polo. They are good people. They drove the girls to evening practices on the East Rand. At times the girls would be welcome for dinner at their home on those evenings. 

These are girls who I have spoken to and speak to whenever we see each other at drop-off and pick-up or at water polo. My daughter spoke to the girls and told them how finding out about the group and seeing some of the comments on it had made her feel. Discussions were had, apologies given and accepted. In our home the matter was settled. 

The school seemed to have a handle on the issue and the Gauteng department of education stepped up. The girls who had been in the group were suspended. We thought life was moving on and the girls could go back to learning. Then last week the story was suddenly in the newspapers and on the television news. 

Political parties, motivated by opportunism, got involved. Learning at the school was disrupted. The girls were anxious and upset all over again. Some media houses, acting with their own opportunism, thought it was a good idea to stand in front of the school as girls were going into the school and to push cameras in front of their faces.

As a parent my heart breaks for the children of this country who still have to endure the insidious effects of racism. This is our fault, us as adults and parents. Children repeat what they hear and see around their dinner tables, on the couches in their lounges and around the braais. If we adults rid ourselves of the complete stupidity of the idea of race and recognise that we all want the same things in life and for our children the lingering tentacles of this bigotry can be overcome.

As a mother my heart also breaks for the girls that have been suspended because they are all in matric. This is one of the most important and difficult years in any child’s life. What they did was not okay, and there had to be consequences. But they are children and there should have been a restorative process centred on acknowledgment, understanding and repair.  

Knowing the story from the inside, the opportunism of political parties and the media has been very disturbing. The media are not serious about facts. They are reckless, and they chose to report on a matter involving children in a way that fanned the flames. This may have got them more clicks and views but it’s unethical. 

Having children’s mistakes plastered over the news is not an ethical way to deal with an issue like this. There should, instead, be factually formed and carefully thought through reflection on our failures as adults to resolve the problems that we inherited.

The department of education also has a lot to answer for. The question of racism in formerly white schools, and some new private schools, has never been properly dealt with and the department only steps in where there is a crisis. Its work should be to ensure that crises don’t happen. It is not clear whether the suspension of the school principal by the Gauteng education department is a step in the right direction, because this article was being written on Tuesday afternoon.

School matters should not be opportunistically misused to make political capital as the Economic Freedom Fighters did when they camped outside the school gates on Tuesday. Matters involving children should be dealt with sensitively and with a view to resolving issues, to learning and growing. We all want our children to flourish and we all have an interest in developing and sustaining schools that enable children to flourish. 

Parents should not sit back until there is a crisis; tempers are boiling over and people are fearful. Parents should be involved with the aim of doing what they can to make the school a nurturing space.  

Pretoria High School for Girls is a beautiful school with some hard working and dedicated teachers. Like all institutions it is not perfect. It has things that it can improve and some that it can discard but it offers way more good than bad to its girls, their families and our country. As parents we need to value all the good things about the school and work to support it to become the best that it can be.

Nontobeko Hlela is a research fellow with the Institute for Pan African Thought & Conversation and a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg.