Racial integration in South African schools in the post-apartheid period did not occur without difficulties. It remains a challenge for the Department of Education, school managers, teachers and parents to ensure that all learners from different racial and linguistic backgrounds share equal educational opportunities in order for them to receive good-quality education, and it still remains a challenge to all stakeholders in education, such as school principals, SGBs and parents, to create environmental conditions that will ensure that schools furnish equal access to all learners who live within a school‟s vicinity, irrespective of their race, creed, colour, gender and social class. It likewise remains a challenge for school-based education stakeholders such as principals and educators to ensure that schools treat all learners from different language, cultural and racial backgrounds with respect, and it furthermore remains a challenge to all South African schools and their staff to teach learners from different backgrounds how to learn and live together in mutual understanding and harmony.
Even after the democratic election in 1994 and the abolishment of apartheid education/Bantu education, there is still much evidence that racism and segregation exist in South African schools. In 1999, it was reported that the legal department of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) had received the second highest number of complaints regarding
racism in the education sector. In a study conducted by the SAHRC in 1999, 62% of the 1 700 learners surveyed from White high schools indicated that there were racial problems at their schools. The report included reports of racism towards Black learners as well as the fact that Black teachers were in the minority in White schools (Vally & Dalamba, 1999:15–21).
One should note the attempts made by some schools to integrate, including certain schools whose practices should be studied as models of good practice, such as Capricorn High School in Polokwane (in the Limpopo province). Capricorn High School teaches three African languages spoken in Limpopo: Tshivenda, Xitsonga and Sepedi. The school encourages African learners to play rugby and cricket, which are usually regarded as sporting codes for White people only. The school also encourages White learners to play soccer, moruba and murabaraba, which are often regarded as sporting codes for African people only.
Given the challenges facing education in post - apartheid schooling phase as discussed above, I therefore conclude that, while a genuinely integrated schooling system was and is still at the heart of the vision for a new democratic education system in the future, in practice this goal is more complicated and difficult to achieve: Even though a unified national Department of Education has been established and has been functional, the schooling system in South Africa has remained largely separate and segregated.
It is also important for one to acknowledge that desegregation is not just an issue of legislation and policy but also of social, economic and demographic realities. The effects of „group areas‟ and residential segregation impacted the process and will still do so for some years to come. School fees in White schools, which are well resourced, are still inhibiting school desegregation and integration in South African schools. South Africa‟s demography comprises Black people (Coloured, Indian and African people) who are in the majority, are often impoverished, with poorly resourced schools; and White people who are in the minority and are wealthy and reside mostly in suburbs that boast well-resourced schools. This will ensure that most schools found in townships and rural areas that are under-resourced will never be racially desegregated and integrated, but will remain exclusively African, since few
resourced schools found in suburbs, with no movement of White learners from these areas to township and rural area schools (Naidoo, 1999a:29).
For all the transformation processes that have occurred thus far in South African schools related to desegregation and racial integration, the reality is that racial integration in public schools has a long way to go. Just as in some Model C schools and pockets of ex (HOD) schools that were previously reserved for Indians, which are experiencing minimal levels of racial integration, the majority of public schools are racially exclusive in practice (Department of Education, 2001a:1).
The way in which schools adapt to increased integration in South African schools was and is still critical. Their responses differ from school to school. Some schools have embraced the changes and experimented with new approaches and curricula that have challenged old apartheid educational practices. For example, Venterpos Primary School, a school situated in the West Rand of Gauteng province, experimented with a parallel medium and dual medium of instruction. Parallel medium implies that some classes are taught in English only and some classes are taught in Afrikaans only. This, to me, is like running an English school and an Afrikaans school within one institution, which in my view is not different from schools for White learners only and for Black learners only. A dual medium of instruction implies that the educator is expected to teach in both Afrikaans and English during his or her lessons, in other words if the period is 30 minutes long, the educator is expected to teach for 15 minutes using Afrikaans and the remaining 15 minutes using English. This to me is like teaching two classes in one. It is like teaching an English class and an Afrikaans class in one class. I for one am not of the opinion that the introduction of a parallel medium of instruction served the purpose of desegregation and racial integration in South African schools, because Afrikaans-speaking learners were taught separately in their own classes while Black learners were taught separately in theirs. I believe this is the same as separate Afrikaans schools for Afrikaans- speaking learners and separate English schools for English-speaking Black learners, which, I argue, perpetuated segregation instead of enhancing racial integration in the schools that were experimenting with a parallel medium of instruction. However, I support the idea of a dual medium of instruction because the learners are taught in the same class where they are
expected to interact freely, learn each other‟s culture and respect each other‟s language, which are the pillars of desegregation and racial integration.
Other schools resisted racial integration despite the constitution of the Republic of South Africa and the South African Schools Act, which legalised this in South African schools. In the following section I discuss discriminatory actions that were evident in certain schools.
2.4.3 Racial exclusionary practices in South African schools in the post-apartheid