PRETORIA HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS SCHOOL GOVERNING BODY MEDIA

STATEMENT:

1. The School Governing Body (SGB) of Pretoria High School for Girls (PHSG)
announces that it has today launched court proceedings against the Gauteng
Department of Education (the GDE), the MEC for Education (the MEC), and
others.

2. The court proceedings are aimed at the following:

2.1 To compel production by the MEC of the report of Madladlamba

Attorneys relating to the school (the Report) that was publicised with
so much damaging fanfare by the MEC at the school on 4 November
2024, but which the MEC has for some reason refused to release to
the school;

2.2 To interdict the GDE from taking any steps pursuant to the Report,
pending its review and setting-aside; and

2.3 To review and set aside, as irregular and irrational, both the MEC’s
decision to commission the Report, and the Report itself.

3. PHSG is a jewel of a school. It has existed for over a century. It is fully

integrated. It serves its community. It consistently provides the highest
standard of education to the young ladies who are fortunate enough to be at
the school, and it consistently produces a matriculation pass rate of between
99% and 100%, with an impressively high percentage of university entrance
qualificants (that is more than double the National average).

4. The SGB is an elected body from within the school, the majority of whom are
elected parents. They serve without remuneration, giving of their time for the
sake of their daughters, and generally for the sake of South African public
education.

5. Racism is abhorrent. It is abhorrent to all right-thinking South Africans, and it

is abhorrent to the school. Even allegations of racism leave an indelible stain.
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And that is why we all should be very careful before we even suggest that
someone is guilty of something so abhorrent. All the more is that so in the
education environment.

Yet unsubstantiated and ungrounded allegations of racism are what PHSG,

and learners at PHSG, have been subjected to at the instance of the very
body from which PHSG and its learners should have been entitled to expect
protection and not its opposite – the GDE.

6. The court papers which PHSG have launched will show that officials of the
GDE insisted on PHSG learners being charged with the abhorrence of racism
in their matric year, close to their matric exams, on the basis of their
involvement in a private WhatsApp group and messages within that group
which the Thabo Mbeki Foundation quite rightly described in a letter to the
MEC dated 10 October 2024 in these terms:

“We ourselves have also closely studied the comments made by the chat
group, independently, to determine whether these constituted manifestations
of racism and hate speech. Our own firm conclusion is that there is no such
manifestation in the said comments.”

7. The GDE officials in question should have appreciated what the Thabo Mbeki
Foundation was able to appreciate, and what the SGB disciplinary tribunal
that was convened to decide the case against the learners (and which
unanimously acquitted them) was able to appreciate, which is that there was
no racism involved.

8. Then, when the learners were acquitted, the GDE professed to respect the
outcome, but didn’t. It embarked on an entirely unjustified and groundless
witch-hunt for further examples of racism. It appointed Mdladlamba Attorneys
to, “conduct an investigation into the allegations of racism at Pretoria Girls
High”.

9. And then, when Madladlamba Attorneys were (as the school knew would be
the case) unable to find instances of racism (except for the allegation that –
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we quote from the GDE’s Media Statement of 4.11.2024, not having been
provided with a copy of the Report itself – “white educators do not greet their
black colleagues”, a generalisation which is so vague, unproven and
unprovable that it doesn’t belong in any self-respecting report. But there it
apparently is, leaving its unproven and unprovable stain. The investigators
apparently claim that the school’s principal confirmed the allegation. But that
is entirely out of context), despite the fact that their mandate was to
investigate racism only (the GDE’s HOD wrote to the school as recently as 3
September 2024 proclaiming that “the intention of this investigation is to
determine whether there is a cause for concern at the school. Should there be
no racism at the school, same will mean the end of this investigation”), they
went on to seek other issues with which the school could be charged and the
MEC, without apparent concern for the fact that these other issues had
nothing to do with racism, publicised those findings on 4 November 2024 to
the obvious detriment of the school.

10. The court papers will show that the investigators had no mandate to go
beyond racism, and that once they found no evidence of racism the
investigation should, as promised by the HOD on 3 September 2024, have
ended. But the court papers will go on to show that even those other,
unmandated, findings against the school by the investigator are themselves
entirely without substance and would, with the simplest of further enquiry,
have shown themselves to be without substance. The SGB wants to
emphasise this. PHSG has been subjected to an MEC whose task should be
to uplift, and to assist with education, fanfaring unmandated and
unsubstantiated – and plain incorrect – findings of wrongdoing on the part of
the school, without the school ever having been given the opportunity to see
those findings, and to answer them before the MEC-initiated glare of publicity.

11. Just one instance in this regard. South Africans will know that the charges of
racism against the learners (charges which, the SGB repeats, were levelled at
the learners only because officials of the GDE insisted thereon – this can be
proven) were widely publicised, and that the school had to endure political
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demonstrations outside its gates. It was obvious to the school – if not to the
GDE – that the hearing had the potential of being highly controversial. For that
reason, the school briefed an independent, experienced, practising advocate
to chair the disciplinary tribunal. The SGB is convinced that no right-thinking
South African could find fault with that. And yet, because the advocate had, in
order to comply with GDE regulations (which require such disciplinary
tribunals to be chaired by an SGB member), to be co-opted onto the SGB for
the sole purpose of enabling him to chair the tribunal, one of the findings
against the school, publicised with so much fanfare, is that the school should
not have paid the advocate. The school will defend itself against this, but the
mere fact that the MEC should allow this speaks to how the school has been
mistreated.

12. None of this should have happened. The school, and its SGB, shouldn’t be in
this adversarial relationship with the Department. The Department should
have helped, and protected. The Thabo Mbeki Foundation in its
aforementioned letter called on the MEC and the GDE to do the right and not
the wrong thing, and it emphasised the importance of teaching, of schools and
of proper order in schools. It spoke to the GDE’s apparent unconcern about
political demonstrations at schools, and the way in which the GDE has treated
PHSG’s Principal (we quote from the letter: “This situation was made worse
by obliging the Principal to appear at a School Assembly to make an
unwarranted apology to the learners …. What did the GDE seek to achieve by
treating the very Head of the School in this shameful and humiliating
manner?”).

13. Yet, it has happened. PHSG has been treated shamefully, and South Africa
and education have suffered. The Principal and staff of PHSG are prohibited
by the GDE from speaking up. Only the school’s SGB may speak for it. So it
has. It is to right these wrongs that PHSG’s SGB has felt compelled to launch
the application.