Roedean-King David row: a dialogue for the kids should have been facilitated

A dispute between two of Johannesburg's most prestigious religious private schools ended with Roedean's principal and its board chair resigning after a controversy over their school's failure to honour a tennis fixture against King David Linksfield.

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The former is a prominent Anglican-affiliated independent girls' school and the latter is a Jewish coed day school.

The incident centred on a private phone call on 2 February between the two school heads in which Roedean's Phuti Mogale revealed to King David Linksfield's Lorraine Srage that she was under pressure from parents to avoid playing against a Jewish school.

Despite Mogale's stated intention to honour the fixture, the Roedean team was absent when King David learners arrived to play on 3 February. Roedean communicated that the reason for the cancellation was a clash with academic timetables, which the leaked phone conversation disproved.

In the recording, Mogale says Roedean parents did not want their daughters playing against King David girls because this did not align with the ANC-led government's stance on Israel. Srage asks whether the parental objection is because the King David girls are Jewish, and Mogale replies “Yes”.

Disagreement is unavoidable in pluralistic societies. But the tragedy is that this disagreement immediately hardened into rigid certainty. Public statements escalated and media debates intensified.