“Hair remains a political matter and schools remain a fertile ground for that politicisation.”
Those were the words of a talk-show host on Friday morning discussing the latest incident in which a school pupil had been discriminated against because of her hair.
The 13-year-old pupil had been barred from attending classes at Crowthorne Christian Academy because her dreadlocks violate the school’s new hair policy.
She was forcefully removed from her grade 8 classroom this week.
The girl had initially been wearing her natural Afro in a bun, in braids or plaited.
But, her mother said, they changed to dreadlocks after the school changed its code of conduct with regard to the grooming of pupils’ hair in April.
The school’s revised policy states, “Only natural hair allowed, no hair extensions are permitted”.
The mother said she had explained to the principal in a text that her daughter would be returning to school after the holidays with dreadlocks and that they were not extensions.
She said she received no feedback.
She later received a text complaining that the girl’s dreadlocks were not neatly tied in a bun and, after correcting that, she received yet another text saying her daughter should not return to school if her dreadlocks were still intact.
What ensued was the incident in which a man known as Henk allegedly forcefully dragged the girl out of the classroom.
The mother has opened a common assault case with the police against the man and was planning to lay a complaint with the Human Rights Commission against the school.
This is not the first time black girls have been targeted — by white school staff — for their hair.
in 2016, Pretoria schoolgirl Zulaikha Patel, 13 at the time, held a demonstration that led to a change in policy at Pretoria Girls’ High School.
That demonstration over discriminatory hair policies dominated the headlines and sparked similar protests around the country, including at Gqeberha’s Lawson Brown High School.
So how is it that, in 2023 democratic SA, with its diversity of people and, by extension, its diversity of hair, there are still schools that are banning girls for wearing their natural hair?
Hair is deeply intertwined with culture and spirituality and in some societies, hair length and style signify one’s connection to their ancestral heritage.
And in SA, especially, where race was determined during apartheid by the pencil test — a method of pushing a pencil through an individual’s hair and how easily it came out determined whether one’s race — we cannot allow these hurtful and discriminatory incidents.
We hear it every time such incidents occur: “They know the school rules. Why not just leave?”
The question we should rather be asking is why school rules do not accommodate our diverse nation.
HeraldLIVE