Black and White South African Students Segregated on First Day of School
Written by SOURCE on January 10, 2019
It looks like the influence of apartheid still remains strong in some parts of South Africa.
Daily Mail reports that black and white children in a South African school were made to sit at separate tables on the first day of class. A classroom picture of the seating arrangement shared by the school teacher has since angered parents.
Display of racism in Grade 1 at Schweizer-Reneke Laerskool, North West Province, South Africa as black students in a small space are separated from white students sitting on proper tables and chairs. pic.twitter.com/nBW2ILVWZr
— Africa Facts Zone (@AfricaFactsZone) January 9, 2019
The photo shows a group of 18 white students seated at a larger table in the center of the room, while the class’ tinier group of black students sits at a smaller table in the back corner of the room. The children in the image are between the ages 4 through 5 and attend Laerskool Schweizer-Reneke kindergarten in the northwest part of the country.
One of the black student’s mothers told TimesLIVE, “This was meant to be an exciting day for me but it’s not. I am pissed off.”
The teacher shared the photo on the school’s WhatsApp group to show how the first day at school was going, but clearly didn’t think the plan through. The image is extremely evocative of South Africa’s dark history of institutionalized racial segregation, which ended in the early 1990s.
