Confronting racial violence in schools

School violence manifests itself in many forms including discipline problems such as fighting among learners, bullying, utterances of crude and sexist remarks against fellow learners and teachers, racism, stabbings, shootings at schools and even murder.

However, given that race frequently intersects with gender and class at the point of perpetration and marginalization, these issues need to be considered in conjunction with identity issues more generally.

Given the racism of the country's past (which, unlike other countries, was legally and socially entrenched through the apartheid system), the racialized quality of such violence poses a particularly difficult and direct challenge to South Africa's fragile human rights culture. While racism and racially motivated violence continue to play themselves out in the new South Africa there is never a deep engagement and unpacking of a culture of school-based violence.

The recent violent and racial events are indicative of a larger societal problem that we can no longer afford to ignore. In November 2024, a grade 12 learner allegedly stabbed a Grade 9 learner to death on the school premises. Last week, three school pupils from a school in Durban were taken to hospital after being stabbed in an alleged racial altercation. While the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education has condemned the racism-related violence that erupted, we have to recognise that these are not isolated incidents, but manifestations of a larger systemic problem. Violence in schools in South Africa is embedded in this bigger (national) picture of violence.

Racialised violence in schools is not an isolated phenomenon but a systemic issue that perpetuates exclusionary practices, reinforcing the dominance of white cultures. Black learners from various schools across the country continue to experience racial discrimination due to the texture of their hair; these incidents have been widely reported in the media, sparking significant social media outcries. This underscores how deeply ingrained such practices remain.

The truth is that almost 31 years into democracy, our schools are still grappling with the politics of Black hair, as many policies remain overly restrictive regarding hairstyles Black students can freely wear on school grounds. The auctioning of Black learners at a school in Cape Town and the 2022 protest in Randfontein over a derogatory racial slur further underscore the prevalence of racialised violence in educational settings.

These incidents raise critical questions: What emboldens such harmful behaviours among learners? What factors drive the repeated occurrence of racialised violence, despite the progress schools claim to make toward inclusion and safety? Are these acts treated as isolated, one-off incidents, or should they be examined within a broader historical and structural context of school violence prevention?

Investigating these issues as singular events only scratches the surface, failing to acknowledge the systemic nature of exclusionary practices and their entwinement with broader cultural and social dynamics. To create truly safe learning environments, we must interrogate why such behaviours continue and what societal forces embolden them.

Going forward, we need to address the underlying causes of school violence and create the deep-rooted changes that must occur to create safe learning environments for all children. Schools shouldn't wait for a racist incident to happen to be engaging with the realities racism in a post-apartheid society. In fact, all schools in South Africa ought to actively engage in anti-racism education and frame it within the historical and societal contexts that perpetuate inequality. Only then can we begin to dismantle exclusionary practices and create educational spaces where all students, regardless of their race, gender or faith can thrive.

This article was originally published on Cape Times IOL.

Gugu Nonjinge and Tsholofelo Nakedi are Advocacy Specialists at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation