Staff Reporter

KwaZulu-Natal education MEC Sipho Hlomuka said on Thursday that schools should not be misused to stir community tensions, as he addressed parents and officials at Addington Primary School in Durban, following days of protests outside the institution.

Hlomuka said he was “deeply concerned” by the ongoing protests at the perimeter of the school “that have adversely affected teaching and learning”.

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“I know that this issue has occupied the heart and minds of South Africa and it has attracted global attention,” Hlomuka said.

“We have a responsibility as the Department of Education to protect everyone who enters our schools, therefore we will not allow schools to be misused as sites of social conflict. Schools exist for one purpose: teaching and learning.”

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The school – situated on Durban’s popular South Beach – has been the scene of tense, sometimes violent demonstrations this month amid allegation that pupils from immigrant families are being favoured over South Africans for placement.

Some of the admission demands are from indigent families displaced by the April 2022 floods who were moved into temporary accommodation near the school. Those parents have said that transporting their children to other schools will entail crippling financial costs.

Activists from the anti-immigrant movement March and March have been leading protests at the gates of the school, trying to regulate who enters, often with taunts and swearing.
Hlomuka said the protests had left staff and pupils “in trauma”.

“The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa is unambiguous: every child within our borders has the right to basic education.

“Violence has no place in our schools, and those who seek to divide communities by using learners as scapegoats are undermining the values of dignity, equality, and social cohesion,” he said.

He said allegations that the principal and most staff at the school were foreign nationals was false.

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Addington Primary had provided enrolment figures showing 1,548 pupils in total, including 968 South African learners and 580 foreign-national learners, he said.

“As things stand there is a list of between 15 to 21 learners that needs to be resolved,” he said.
“We have therefore resolved to take extraordinary measures to assist these learners and their parents. We want to stress however that this is not going to be allowed to be the norm…”

He said 11 Grade R children could not be accommodated at Addington Primary and that the department had arranged for a nearby early-childhood development centre that feeds into Grade 1, to take those learners.

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