Young Black Heroines fight racism at Pretoria Girl’s High School.
Black learners at Pretoria Girl’s High School surprised South Africa this past couple of days when they decided to take a stand against a long lasting negative notion towards Black people’s hair in the professional world. This was a result of the school’s policy of forcing their Black students to straighten their naturally curly hair and stating hairstyles such as dreadlocks, thick braids, Afro, cornrows, etc. as unacceptable and against school rules. Another issue that came to surface and has also been common in South African schools is the discouraging of Black learners from using South African languages when communicating together at school (I was also a victim of this at my school). Most schools discourage Black students from communicating with their own African languages when at school which is where most kids spend their time socializing and talking, which ultimately leads to African languages starting to die out and African kids growing up only knowing how to communicate in English and none of their native languages ultimately making our African culture and tradition obsolete.
So the young Black ladies at Pretoria Girl’s High school decided to do a march and have a standoff with school management (mainly White), who then used security to threaten and allegedly harass the young girls.
This issue is not specific to Pretoria Girls High School and it is common in many schools (known as Model C schools) located in middle to upper class areas in South Africa, and because of this protest many took on social media to also express their experiences in many other schools through the #StopRacismAtPretoriaGirlsHigh hashtag.
I hope our government and politicians will step up to help change this notion in all schools which practice such rules in South Africa. You cannot expect Black people in Africa, in an African school, to not wear their natural hair in its natural state.