After 17 years as Brackenfell’s Dutch Reformed Church minister, Guillaume Smit is well aware of the racial divisions in his community. But as chair of the governing body at Brackenfell High School — the scene of violent clashes this week between locals and EFF supporters — he is forced to admit the fissures between the neighbourhood’s children run even deeper than he imagined.
“I have a feeling that we don’t know the half of it because it doesn’t even reach us,” says Smit.
“The children who experience the racism have likely already become so used to dealing with it, without reporting it, that they live with it and don’t communicate it — probably because they feel no channels exist where they can discuss it.”
Racism in the far northern suburb of Cape Town hit the headlines when it emerged that a private R500-a-head matric event — held after Covid-19 forced the cancellation of the official ball — was attended only by whites.
Smit, who with principal Jannie Muller signed a letter to parents on Thursday saying they “deeply regret the pain [the ball] caused learners, especially our learners of colour”, says he believes many people in Brackenfell are unaware of their racial biases.
The suburb became part of Cape Town in 1994. Before then it was a rural town, a bastion of apartheid and a safe haven for Afrikaners. Now it is 70% Afrikaner and one in three pupils at the high school is black.
Smit says the Black Lives Matter movement helped black pupils find their voice and sparked the Brackenfell High Stories group on Instagram, where they relive their experiences of racism from white pupils.
He says this led to the formation of a diversity committee at the school. Progress was halted by the pandemic but Smit and Muller said in their letter that the committee and the school were now discussing issues raised by black pupils.
After Monday’s clashes in which a group of white community members assaulted EFF protesters outside the school, a black parent told the Sunday Times: “Some of the kids felt like the EFF were there to rescue them. Some of the black and the coloured kids were like, ‘yes, our voices are being heard’.”
Smit says the assaults left the EFF with the moral high ground, and the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu), the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, the ANC, parents and former pupils condemned the violence as an act of racism.
“We are appalled that the right to peaceful protest is met with violence by racist factions in the area.
“Sadtu condemns the action of the right-wingers who have now polarised our society,” said the union’s provincial secretary, Jonavon Rustin.
The protest was against a private matric ball organised by a group of Afrikaans-speaking parents, attended by at least two teachers and recorded by the video production company contracted by the school.
“Of the 254 matrics at the school, 42 and their parents attended,” said DA national spokesperson Refiloe Nt’sekhe in a letter condemning the EFF for its protest at the school and accusing it of race-baiting.
On Tuesday, when a police cordon prevented white parents approaching the school, one father who refused to give his name said the EFF was disrupting the lives of matric pupils writing exams “for something that has nothing to do with them”.
“They [the EFF] came looking for a confrontation. I’m not here to confront these people but the day they come back and confront us, we won’t stand back.”
Smit says it is difficult to change the heart of a community.
“We tend to say we wait until the dust settles. I don’t think the dust will settle soon. I’m sorry. This which we’re experiencing now, it’s two weeks after Senekal, in three weeks it’s another thing, and it’s getting bigger.”
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