Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 14-01-2019

(Twitter: @FaizelPatel143)

The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation says the allegations of racism at a North West primary school is not an isolated incident and there are many more that have not been reported.

Laerskool Schweizer-Reneke has been accused of racism after a photo went viral showing a group of white pupils in a classroom sitting together while their four black classmates sit at a small table at the door.

The teacher in charge of that grade R class has been suspended.

IJR’s Stan Henkeman says incidents of racism in South Africa takes place in different settings all the time where people are excluded based solely on their race.

“We need to be realistic about the fact that we live in a society that has a history of very long history of exclusion, marginalisation and particularly racism and you talking really about hundreds of years of colonialism and apartheid.”

Henkeman says racism in South Africa cannot be dealt with in one generation.

“If we want to minimise the occurrence of these things, one has to also learn the lesson that it is not enough to only deal with the manifestation as we’ve seen in that classroom, but go to the deeper aspect of interrogating why it is.”

Henkeman says there is a lot of hard work that is required to eradicate racism from South African societies.