Fish Hoek High School. Picture: Leon Lestade/African News Agency
Cape Town - The Freedom Front Plus (FF Plus) has announced that the party had lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Commission (HRC) over the recently suspended diversity workshops held at Fish Hoek High School.
The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) initiated workshops in response to outrage over an alleged racial incident in May this year in which a teacher used a racial slur during a lesson.
The incident highlighted a systemic problem of racial discrimination at the school, decried protesting learners.
FF Plus said it lodged the complaint against Education MEC David Maynier and the group who presented the session on behalf of parents who had reached out to the party.
FF Plus asked the HRC to probe the matter and material used during the workshops and to rule on their constitutionality, dubbing the workshops “traumatic” and “unconstitutional”.
“Firstly, learners’ right to freedom and security was violated seeing as they were held in the school hall against their will and without the lawful supervision of teachers, who were told to wait outside,” FF Plus national chairperson advocate Anton Alberts said in a statement.
“Under these circumstances, the presenters stated that white people are the only ones who can be racists, while black people cannot seeing as they have no power.”
The party slammed critical race theory, stating that the pupils were “set up to be vulnerable subjects of this propaganda”.
Education MEC David Maynier said an investigation was ongoing.
“We have been very clear: what happened at Fish Hoek High School should never have happened, and a full investigation is under way.”
The Social Justice Agency Managing director Edwin Cleophas said Diversity training or Diversity Equity and Inclusion work has a very specific role to play in organisations and institutions, with its existence stemming from the past wherein people of colour were excluded from opportunities, resources, education and success by white people.
Cleophas said as a country, we’re unable to move forward until this is realised, as well as understanding its current influence today.
“In reality for some of these parents and teachers that felt the need to oppose the training so significantly, one would have hoped that they would have also done the same when the racist incident within the racist system inside the school occurred but we didn’t see the same intensity,” Cleophas said.
“When you take a magnifying glass and enhance the sins of white people, historically or current, the outcry is almost always one of severe injustice.”
shakirah.thebus@inl.co.za