Beyond schoolyard violence: confronting SA’s racial tensions

Recent violent incidents in SA schools highlight the persistent racial tensions that continue to plague the education system. Professor Murthee Maistry examines how apartheid’s legacy manifests in today’s classrooms, and he offers practical solutions for fostering integration and healing in school communities

- 

VIOLENCE in South African schools is becoming a more regular phenomenon.

While it is not peculiar to South Africa, research indicates that perpetrators are usually disgruntled individuals who use schools as sites to vent their frustrations.

School shootings in the USA are a case in point.

However, the recent violence at Glenover Secondary School, in Chatsworth, appeared to have started off as a relatively minor confrontation between school pupils on a soccer field.

What is particularly disturbing is that adults not directly related to the school deliberately orchestrated and escalated the altercation beyond a scuffle into extremely violent action involving weapons.

If this were a premeditated stabbing of young children and was led by a parent and other non-schoolers, then the full might of the law must take its course, and the culprits have to be brought to book.

While it is not clear what the extent of the injuries was, these could well have been five deaths with far-reaching consequences for racial conflict in what can be described as vulnerable school communities, where different races are still trying to work out how to coexist.

Both the official response from the KZN Department of Education and the media coverage have labelled this as racially-motivated violence. The racial dimension to this incident cannot be ignored and is indeed a cause for concern.

In a country still reeling from racial identities imposed by its former colonial rulers, racial identity continues to be the first marker of offender and victim. It is very difficult to escape this default perception. So retaliatory acts of violence in fragile post-race societies like South Africa require careful diagnosis and intervention.

That four black pupils were attacked by people who were Indian adults suggests that there are deep racial issues still at play in South African society.