New hairstyle tangle at school

Gauteng MEC of education Panyaza Lesufi, pictured above, yesterday gave Windsor House Academy three months to formulate new policies promoting equality after controversy over pupils’ hairstyles.

Eleven black pupils were chased off the school’s premises on Monday for “unruly” hair.

“No pupil will be expelled because of issues dealing with hair. No one will be victimised,” Lesufi told pupils in an address at the Kempton Park-based girls private school.

Windsor House Academy was instructed to suspend the current policies and create new ones incorporating input from the girls and management to ensure the rules were equal for all pupils. “Nominate four girls who will sit with management and I will come back in three months to ensure you have new policies everyone will respect,” said the MEC.

Siyabonga Ngwenya, an aunt of one of the girls who were chased away from the school, said it was not the first time she had been told her niece had to change her hairstyle when it was natural or she had extensions. She said the principal, Mariette van Heerden, had told the girls they should not think they could be trendy, because it was her school.

But Ngwenya said there were no set rules for hairstyles at the school and on requesting the code of conduct she was told she could not have it because she was not the biological parent of the pupil.

One pupil told Lesufi: “The code of conduct changes all the time.” Responding to the pupils’ grievances, Van Heerden said: “Discipline is order, whether we appreciate or oppose it.” – ANA