The mother of a grade R learner from Laerskool
Schweizer-Reneke in the North West is fuming after a picture showed her child
and three other black children sitting separately from the white children in
their class.
The picture was shared on the school's WhatsApp group by
the children's class teacher.
"This was meant to be an exciting day for me but it's
not," said the parent. The mother,
who is not being named to protect the identity of her child, told TimesLIVE
that her child's first day in grade R had initially started off smoothly.
She and other parents dropped their children off and were
asked to leave the school premises. At 9am, they received an update from the
children's teacher on how their day was going via the WhatsApp group.
The picture showed the 18 white learners in the classroom
all occupying a single large desk in the middle of the classroom, while the
four black children in the class occupied one desk in a corner at the far end
of the classroom.
"All I saw was messages from the white parents saying
'dankie, dankie' ['thank you, thank you' on the WhatsApp group] but no one was
saying anything about the separation of the learners," said the fuming
mother.
She said after discussing this with another parent outside
of the WhatsApp group, that parent contacted the school principal to ask about
the seating arrangements
TimesLIVE was told that the principal said she was not
aware of the situation. The school is being contacted and this article will be
updated once its response is obtained.
Asked how the situation made her feel, the frustrated
mother said she hoped her five-year-old child was still too young to have
noticed what was happening.
"But I am pissed off," said the mother, who said
she was not sure what further steps to take.
Meanwhile, the picture has since gone viral on social
media. Among those who voiced their concerns was student activist
Mcebo Dlamini.
"What is most provoking about this image is not that
black kids are ostracized from white kids, that is common in our supposedly
post-apartheid Africa. Rather what becomes painful is that there are black
people who still insist that racism has ended and who think that blacks and
whites can have peaceful relations that do not have undertones of racism,"
he wrote on his Facebook page.
"This is impossible so long as white people have
power, what therefore is needed is to change the existing power dynamics such
that black people can have dignity. You can take your kids to the whitest
schools in the country but so long as the black majority is poor, your kids
will always be reminded that they are black and therefore inferior. Your money
can't buy you out of this anti-black world. It is only when the black
collective is free that we can begin reclaiming our rightful place in our land
of birth." Times
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